If studying statistics doesnt call to mind telephone surveys, ESP tests and serving lunch to low-income Vermonters, odds are you havent taken a class with Sheila Weaver. For 17 years the lecturer of statistics has upped the probability of her students success with a combination of theory, activities, practical application and service learning. Her accomplishments were recently honored with UVMs Kroepsch-Maurice Award for Teaching Excellence.
I tend to present information in a lot of different ways to reach students with different ways of learning, Weaver says. She began a class last week, for instance, with song lyrics she composed, set to the tune of the Beatles Revolution. You say youve got a distribution/A bell, you know/We all want to know its name.
The song helps them to remember concepts, she says, noting that she brings in her clarinet on occasion to illustrate mathematical permutations.
She follows the song by passing out Zener cards, which are used by parapsychologists to test psychic ability. The deck comprises five kinds of card: a star, three vertical wavy lines, a plus sign, a circle and a square.
Does anybody here think they have ESP? Weaver asks, passing out the decks to teams of two students each.
I might, volunteers one student. I knew you were going to ask us that, jokes another.
As one student tries to guess the order of the cards, his or her partner records the results, then posts them along a numbered line on the chalkboard.
Consulting a book titled, Why People Believe Weird Things, Weaver tells the students that, according to the Association for Research and Enlightenment, more than seven correct guesses reflect that a person has ESP.
But should it? Since there are 25 cards in the deck and five kinds of card, there is a one in five chance, or 20 percent likelihood, of making the right guess. Five correct guesses, Weaver explains, are average. More than seven correct easily could happen by chance, according to a random sampling distribution. By the end of class, the wannabe-clairvoyants have learned new theoretical concepts in a way they wont forget.
Statistics is a subject that can be applied to many different kinds of research, Weaver says. When students see statistics in practice, they learn to be more critical consumers of information.
Service learning projects provide concrete experience of statistics as a tool to obtain practical information with practical applications. A member of UVMs Athletic Council, Weaver engaged one class last year in a telephone survey to gauge UVM community members interest and opinions of campus athletic events. She sent a report of the interpreted data to Edwin Colodny, then UVMs interim president.
He came to class and spent the whole hour talking with the students about the survey results and about the issues, Weaver recalls.
Other projects serve the community more directly. In conducting a survey for the Committee on Temporary Shelter in Burlington, Weaver had students help prepare lunch at the facility, in addition to handing out surveys to get a feel for the organization. This semester, one class helped gather telephone survey information on a variety of topics from 435 randomly-selected citizens for a poll by the Vermont Department of Forest, Parks and Recreation.
Each class works on three mini-projects per semester, Weaver explains. One is service learning and two are data-gathering and research projects they can choose themselves."
Since her students, most of them in their first or second year at UVM, run the gamut from liberal arts majors to engineering and business majors, their projects reflect a wide range of interests: from determining whether men or women are more likely to help a female student manage a large box to how long it takes each gender to honk their horn at a car stopped at a red light.
Students really enjoy the research projects, Weaver says. They have to plan how to conduct the research in order to gather a good sample. And they are often surprised by their results.
Surprise also adds to Weavers obvious enjoyment of teaching. The students are so open to new ideas, she says. And consistent with every teachers dream, she loves it when former students look her up to tell her, You know what? I use statistics all the time.
As do the media. Last week, a Vermont Press Bureau reporter called on Weaver to help explain why a recent poll predicted Doug Racine would win the Nov. 5 gubernatorial election with a 10 percent lead.
The poll wasnt necessarily flawed, Weaver says. It may not have represented a random demographic, some voters may have changed their opinions, and theres always a margin for error. Which the reporter might have known if he had studied statistics.
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