Congratulations to RSS fellows Dr Laura Bonnett and Dr Simon White, whose article on demonstrating to 11‐18 year-olds how population modelling using sampling works has been published in the journal Teaching Statistics:
The article, ‘Investigating populations via penguins and their poo!’ describes an activity that uses toy penguins and poo emojis to demonstrate how aerial photographs of penguin guano can be used to estimate the population of an entire penguin colony.
It’s one of eight Hands-on Statistics activities developed by Laura and Simon, who are both members of the RSS Education and Statistical Literacy Committee. The activities are all designed to help others introduce secondary school students to statistical concepts by demonstrating how they are used in real life.
Laura, a medical statistician at the University of Liverpool, said: ‘This activity is my favourite of the set of eight so I’m delighted to see it published in Teaching Statistics. This will hopefully inspire students, STEM ambassadors and teachers alike, and help them to appreciate the real-life application of statistics.’
Simon, also a medical statistician, at the University of Cambridge, added: ‘One of the strengths of teaching statistics is that with some imagination we can embed our message within different subjects or real life applications. This activity highlights that approach, moving statistics from a dry sibling of mathematics to an engaging part of science in its own right.’