Stats in the Wild
As part of Maths Week Scotland 2025, Dr Lucy Rycroft-Smith and Darren Macey have produced a set of bespoke evidence-based resources for exploring statistics using outdoor maths.
Each set of resources contains a student activity sheet, a set of teacher notes, and some short videos exploring ways that maths teachers can bring out some of the important statistical ideas in the lesson.
Creature Features
The first set of lesson resources, Creature Features, supports students in thinking about classification diagrams (such as dichotemous keys in biology) to help support the idea of classifying arthropods, leading to them designing their own diagrams to classify photographs of creatures taken in the wild.
Download the teacher notes
Download the student worksheet
Download MWS Activity 1 Arthropod Photographs
Download MWS Activity 1 Classification Schemes
Wings and Things
The second set of lesson resources is called Wings and Things, this time encouraging students to take an exploratory data analysis approach by playing with a data set about bird sightings in two locations in Scotland and both asking and answering questions about the data in context, using the free online tool CODAP.
Download the teacher notes
Download the student worksheet
Download MWS Activity 2 BirdsData.xlsx
Flora Explorer
The third set of lesson resources is called Flora Explorer – where students get to use a quadrat! – and is focused on a fun set of activities based around modelling and simulating data on types of plants. The lesson resources can be done in any order and are suitable for students aged 11-16.
Download the teacher notes
Download the student worksheet
Download MWS Activity 3 Large Grids
Download MWS Activity 3 Small Grids
Download MWS Activity 3 Modelling Spreadsheet.xlsx
Graph Craft
Finally, there is an exciting infographic competition called Graph Craft in which students can design and submit an infographic (either hand drawn or digital) that tells a story about an issue that is important to them or their community. The competition closes on 10th October 2025 and is open to anyone aged 11-16 who goes to school (or is homeschooled) in Scotland.
Download the teacher notes
Download the student worksheet
Download the Good Data Guidelines
Download Activity 4 Graph Craft Example Infographics
Download Activity 4 Graph Craft competition judging criteria
Using CODAP
To support using CODAP in statistics lesson, there is an additional video that explores some of the basic functions you will need.