Ask Slashdot: Resources For Explaining Statistics For the Very First Time? (thejuliagroup.com)

theodp writes: Teaching multivariate statistics to college students, writes AnnMaria De Mars, was a piece of cake compared to her current project — making a game to teach statistics to middle school students who have never been exposed to the idea. In the interest of making a better game, De Mars asks, "Here's my question to you, oh reader people, what resources have you found useful for teaching statistics? I mean, resources you have really watched or used and thought, 'Hey, this would be great for teaching?' There is a lot of mediocre, boring stuff on the interwebz and if any of you could point me to what you think rises above the rest, I'd be super appreciative." Larry Gonick's The Cartoon Guide to Statistics is pretty amazing, but is it a little too advanced for this age group? Anyone have experience with the Khan Academy Data and Statistics offerings? Any other ideas?

Comments

M&M Fun Packs

[sensei moreh]

This was for a college course, but should work for middle school students too. I distributed fun packs of M&Ms to my students and had them count the number of each color and the total number of pieces in each pack. Nice illustration of mean, median, and mode, and a good lead-in to a discussion of variation.