May 26 2013

What’s in a name?

Share coke with Sophie, photo by Sophie Young

My daughter Sophie got me thinking about popular names recently with this picture. With Coke’s current Share a Coke campaign it is possible to find a Coke with your name on the label if your name happens to be in the top popular names as decided by an ‘independent expert’.

Some of those names can be found in the lists compiled by the Office for National Statistics. This pdf details the key findings from the data and includes Excel files to download various tables. If you want to download the top 100 baby names for boys and the top 100 baby names for girls use this link. The Comparison Tool from ONS shows clearly how the popular names have changed in ranking. I like the use of Wordle by the ONS to illustrate popular names.

The ONS describe groups of users and uses of baby name statistics which includes those involved in the manufacture and sale of named items (like coke!). The list also includes researchers, who examine how names are changing over the years and possibly how this reflects changes in culture.

I think teachers and students can also be users of the baby name statistics because in my experience it goes down very well with students! After choosing a title for this post I recalled this suggested lesson with the same title from Census at school, a lesson suggested for Year 7 (age 11-12) where learners are asked to investigate popular first names and do a survey for their class on the image of first names and to report their results. This involves data collection, presenting data and designing a survey. Another suggested lesson which I have have successfully used myself is Baby Names from Stats4schools. The lesson involves students investigating the popularity of names and asks whether names get more or less popular over time.

Students might be interested to see how their school compares to the ONS data.

Further websites offering Statistics on names:

Anna Powell-Smith’s website England & Wales Baby Names has details of names chosen by parents in England & Wales each year from 1996 to 2010 (based on the ONS data discussed above), using this site makes it easy to see the popularity of a name over time, we could search on Colleen for example!

Entering a name into WolframAlpha shows US Statistics for that name and gives the etymology of the name and notable people with that name.

This Wikipedia entry has the top 10 names for various regions of the world.

And just what you always wanted to know – The Most Popular Dog Names in the English Speaking World!

Image from http://www.wordle.net/

May 5 2013

Thoughts this week …

The Mathematics of Pringles

WolframAlpha – hyperbolic paraboloid – click on the image for details

One day this week over our break time coffee, the Mathematics department was discussing the shape of a Pringle – as you do! I thought I’d look a little further into this and have it on good authority that a Pringle is a hyperbolic paraboloid. See Professor Benson Farb of the University of Chicago in the video posted on Freakonomics, The Math of Pringles.

Statistics Resources

Last week I mentioned various Statistics resources. A colleague and I used the Census at school site very successfully this week with our Year 8 classes. The students completed the Census at School 12/13 questionnaire on paper for homework then input their results in a computer room at school. The site worked very well indeed and the exercise led to some great observations and discussions by our students. We have now retrieved the data from the site for our two classes and can use that in our lessons this week. Working with data that they have generated themselves is certainly motivating and meaningful for our students.

Mini Tests

I’m still using mini tests for my exam classes, I asked my Year 11 students to sketch the various graphs needed for our exam specification then went on to ask them to sketch some graphs and transformed graphs on the same diagram (see the KS4 resources).

Apr 28 2013

Statistics Resources

This week I will be studying Statistics with both Year 8 (UK, age 12-13) and Year 12 (UK, age 16-17). This prompted me to revisit my Statistics and Probability Resources list and happily I was reminded of some of the excellent resources available. (This is one of many lists on the I’m Looking For……page).

To highlight a few sites from that list:

From the always excellent Standards Unit, we have ‘Mostly Statistics‘. An activity I particularly like which has worked very well in class is S4 Understanding mean Median Mode and Range, selecting the link takes you to a new page which includes a PowerPoint for the activity with an introduction and the solutions.

I have mentioned Hans Rosling’s excellent use of Gap Minder before. Note the links to a guide to the software and a page for teachers.

For more data sets, also for some very useful Excel files see Douglas Butler’s collection.

Another site I posted on some time ago is Mike Hadden’s excellent collection of resources which includes several Statistics resources.

For older students Jonny Griffiths has a wonderful collection of activities – Making Statistics Vital.

An excellent source of real data for students, from unicef, ‘The State of the World’s Children‘; choosing a report for any year will show you several downloads including some under the heading Statistics; these include Excel files such as this: SOWC_2013_Stat_Tables_EFS_FINAL,

The Tools and Calculators section of the list includes virtual dice, also coins and dice simulations.

A quote to end the list!
“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.”
Mark Twain.

May 13 2012

TED-Ed

From TED who provide free and inspiring video talks comes a new education channel: Ted-Ed YouTube Channel. New videos will be added regularly, the introductory video explains TED’s aims for this education initiative.

It is possible to browse the videos by subject. There are a number of Mathematics videos currently available and the collection will grow.

My year 10s (UK age 14-15) were impressed with the video, Hans Rosling’s ‘best stats you’ve ever seen’. We also answered the question he posed near the beginning of the video to see how we compared to the chimpanzees!

Students can try the Gapminder software themselves. A teachers’ page has numerous resources and guides on how to use Gapminder are also available.
It is possible to share a graph, try clicking on the image below to see this graph on Gapminder. You can easily generate different graphs by using the menus available on the axes.
Note the menu on the left of the graph which includes options to browse examples and download a pdf guide.

For further Mathematics videos – see the Videos page.
The TedEd collection has been added to the Evernote shared notebook.

Mar 19 2011

Mathematics Excel Files

For a site with an extensive collection of Excel files for both GCSE and A level – see Mike Hadden’s MathsFiles site.
There are other resources also, including some for Autograph.

A useful feature to help explore the Excel files is the option to see a screenshot.