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2005 Speakers, Titles & Abstracts

This page contains the biographies, titles and abstracts for ALL speakers.  Click on the speaker's name to find each speaker's biography, titles and abstracts.  These same titles and abstracts are also listed by scheduled session on the webpage titled, "2005 Titles & Abstracts by Session".

The 2005 Speakers

Jessica Utts, Professor of Statistics, University of California, Davis

Jennifer Bready, Ass’t Prof. of Mathematics, Mt. Saint Mary College

Richard De Veaux, Professor of Statistics, Williams College

Mark Earley, Ass’t Professor, Bowling Green State University

John Harrison, Mathematics Teacher, Princess Anne High School

Mary Harrison, Mathematics Teacher, Virginia Beach City Public Schools

Deborah Nolan, Professor of Statistics, U of California, Berkeley 

Gina Reed, Professor of Mathematics, Gainesville College 

Norean Sharpe, Assoc. Prof. of Statistics, Babson College 

Cindy van Es, Senior Lecturer, Cornell University 

Tom Short, Assoc. Prof. of Mathematics, Indiana Univ. of Pennsylvania 

Roxy Peck, Prof. of Statistics, California Polytechnic State University

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Jessica Utts, University of California, Davis 

Keynote Speaker
Jessica Utts is a Professor of Statistics at the University of California at Davis, where she joined the faculty in 1978. She received her B.A. in Math and Psychology at SUNY Binghamton, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Statistics at Penn State University. She is the author of "Seeing Through
Statistics" and the co-author with Robert Heckard of "Mind On Statistics" and "Statistical Ideas and Methods," all published by Duxbury Press.  She is also the Editor-in-Chief of Cyberstats: An Introduction to Statistics," an interactive online introductory statistics course. Jessica has been active in the Statistics Education community at the high school and college level. She served as a member and then chaired the Advanced Placement Statistics Development Committee for six years. She is the recipient of the Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award and the Magnar Ronning Award for Teaching Excellence, both at the University of California, Davis. She is also a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Beyond statistics education Jessica's major contributions have been in applying statistics to a variety of disciplines, most notably to parapsychology, the laboratory study of psychic phenomena. She has appeared on numerous television shows, including Larry King Live, ABC Nightline, CNN Morning News and 20/20, and most recently appears in a documentary included on the DVD with the movie "Suspect Zero." Outside of statistics Jessica's major interests are genealogy and travel, with a focus on ancient history.

Opening Keynote ~ Teaching Introductory Statistics: From Dull to Dynamic!
Taking an introductory statistics course used to be seen as a necessary evil by most students, and for good reason! Generally, they were not shown the relevance of the material, they were passive rather than active in the classroom, and they were required to make tedious computations on phony data. In recent years there have been major changes in resources available for teachers and students. This session will discuss some of those changes, and how they can be used to make the introductory statistics course relevant and appealing for teachers and students.

Closing Keynote ~ The New "Mom and Apple Pie" of Introductory Statistics
People in the Statistics Education community have been discussing what makes an introductory statistics course successful, and some general themes have started to emerge. For instance, the American Statistical Association sponsored a project that brought together a dozen statistics educators to try to reach consensus on this topic. The result was a report with six recommendations that can be tailored to different courses and audiences. The recommendations, which will be covered in this session, provide both philosophical and practical guidelines, but not topical suggestions. Therefore, in addition those recommendations, this session will provide a short list of topics that every educated statistics student know when they leave the course.

Breakout Session ~ Hands On, Minds On: Using In-Class Activities as a Learning Tool
We all know that the best way to learn something is to get your mind engaged, through experience or through trying to explain it to someone else. Yet we rarely use these tools in our classes. In this session, attendees will participate in some hands-on activities that can be done in a 50-minute class, and learn how to use activities as effective teaching tools.

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Jennifer Bready is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, New York.  She earned her MA and PhD in Mathematics Education from New York University, and has taught at both the high school and college level.  Although she teaches a variety of courses, Elementary Statistics has been a main focus every year.  Her goal is to create a rich learning experience in all of her courses, incorporating technology and projects students will enjoy!

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Richard De Veaux, Williams College

Dick De Veaux holds degrees in Civil Engineering (B.S.E. Princeton), Mathematics (A.B.Princeton), Dance Education (M.A. Stanford) and Statistics (Ph.D., Stanford). He has taught at the Wharton School, the Princeton University School of Engineering, and, since 1994, has been a professor of Statistics in the Math and Stat Department of Williams College. He has won numerous teaching awards including a “Lifetime Award for Dedication and Excellence in Teaching” from the Engineering Council at Princeton.  He has won both the Wilcoxon and Shewell awards from the American Society for Quality and was elected a fellow of the ASA in 1998.

Dick has been a consultant for over 20 years for such Fortune 500 companies as Hewlett-Packard, Alcoa, American Express, Bank One, GlaxoSmithKline, Dupont, Pillsbury, Rohm and Haas, Ernst and Young, and General Electric. He holds two U.S. patents and is the author of over 30 refereed journal articles. He is the co-author, with Paul Velleman and David Bock, of the critically acclaimed textbooks “Intro Stats”, “Stats: Modeling the World” and “Stats: Data and Models” all published by Addison-Wesley.

His hobbies include cycling, swimming, singing (barbershop, doo wop and classical -- he is the head of the Diminished Faculty, a local doo wop group) -- and dancing (he was once a professional dancer and teaches Modern Dance during Winter Study at Williams).  He is the father of two boys and two girls aged 16, 14, 12 and 10.

After-dinner ~  "Math is Music: Statistics is Literature"
Gauss could add up hundreds of numbers in his head by the age of 3 and Mozart was playing the pieces he'd heard in church at home by about the same age. But who ever heard of a literary prodigy? Why? Because literature is about the world and the wisdom one gains with experience, not about abstract rules and symbols. The same is true of Statistics. Rather than highlight the formulas that underlie Statistics, we need to emphasize the learning that Statistics gives us about the world. The most common mistakes in Statistics have nothing to do with calculation but everything to do with interpretation and context. How can we help students to use statistical thinking effectively in the chaotic maze of the real world? We think this is best done by outlining the steps in statistical thinking. We'll outline our strategy for informing and exciting students about Statistics and how we use these steps in an introductory course.

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Gina Reed, Gainesville College 

Gina Reed, a professor of mathematics at Gainesville College in Georgia, received a M.A. in Math Education at Appalachian State University and a M A. in Statistics at Pennsylvania State University.  She has received two teaching awards: the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges (AMATYC) Input Award in 2003 and the Georgia Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges (GMATYC) Teaching Excellence Award in 2004.  Ms. Reed also has been the recipient of four grants as well as being the two-year college consultant for Workshop Precalculus.  She has been an active member of AMATYC, MAA, and American Statistical Association (ASA) by presenting talks and serving on committees for these organizations.

Breakout Session ~ "Synthesis through Service Learning in Statistics" - Part One
This presentation focuses on how to incorporate a service learning component into introductory statistics.  To incorporate the project into the course, several changes were made.  The major shift has been in the delivery of the course content.  Making the material relevant and interesting to the students by using current data on the web or using student-generated data is a key element in the restructuring of the course.  Examples of in-class worksheets and laboratory activities will be discussed and participants will work through one activity.  Different instructional technologies will also be discussed.

Breakout Session ~ "Synthesis through Service Learning in Statistics" - Part Two
This presentation focuses on how to incorporate a service learning component into introductory statistics. Service learning is a concrete application of statistical methods using real data with the analysis and interpretation that is useful to a community agency.  Many organizations and agencies produce data that need to be analyzed and interpreted in order to be of use to the group. This presentation will include discussion about locating potential agencies, initiating contact, examples of student projects, and assessment and evaluation of the project from students and agencies.

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Tom Short, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Tom Short is an Associate Professor in the Mathematics Department and Coordinator of the Applied Research Lab at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.  He taught previously at Villanova University for eleven years.  He is the co-founder and organizer of the Pennsylvania Statistics Poster Competition, and has taught many workshops on statistics and data analysis for K-16 students and teachers.  Tom is the chair of the American Statistical Association's Advisory Committee on Teacher Enhancement, past-editor of the Journal of Statistics Education, and a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.

Workshop ~ Using Tinkerplots Software to Explore Graphing for Middle School and Beyond!
Tinkerplots is a new graphing software package developed under the leadership of Cliff Konold by the Statistics Education Research Group at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.  Tinkerplots is intended for students in grades 4 through 8, but offers insights into graphical data analysis to students of all ages. In this workshop we will explore the capabilities of Tinkerplots by constructing graphs and exploring data students might encounter in middle school, high school, and college statistics units and courses.  The emphasis will be on hands-on exploration of real data. Tinkerplots is distributed by Key Curriculum Press.  (http://www.keypress.com/tinkerplots/). [90-minute workshop, 28-seat maximum]

Breakout Session ~ Investigating Statistical Assumptions Using Fathom
We have all learned that a sample size of 30 is recommended or required in order for the Central Limit Theorem (CLT) to take effect, and that the product of a sample size and the binomial proportion of successes (or failures) cannot be too small or else the sample proportion will not follow a normal distribution.  It is not clear that a minimum of 30 is always really necessary for the CLT, and different introductory statistics textbooks and resources provide differing guidelines about the sample size requirement for sample proportions.  In this session we will use Fathom software to explore the consequences of inadequate sample size on statistical inference procedures, and gain insight into how sample size recommendations are determined. 

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Mark Earley, Bowling Green State University

Mark earned his PhD in Educational Research and Statistics in 2001 from the University of Toledo in Ohio. Currently, Mark teaches introductory and advanced statistics and research design courses in education at Bowling Green State University. His research focuses on the teaching and learning of statistics, with a focus on classroom research and reflective practice. Mark has developed classroom research courses for both pre-service and in-service teachers as a way of introducing them to educational research. Mark also leads a faculty learning community devoted to reflective teaching. Mark’s ongoing research projects include case studies of statistics introductory statistics classrooms in mathematics and applied statistics, research in his own introductory statistics classrooms, interviews with students enrolled in statistics courses, and interviews with teachers of introductory statistics courses across campus. Mark advises Secondary Mathematics Education pre-service teachers, conducts program evaluations for both on and off campus programs, serves as President of the BGSU Chapter of Phi Delta Kappa, and was recently nominated as the BGSU Student Alumni Association’s 2005 Master Teacher.

General Session ~ "Looking at Our Classrooms as Teacher-Researchers"
As we constantly strive to improve the teaching of introductory statistics, it is important for teachers to take time to reflect on what they are doing and whether it is working. It is also important for us to share our successes and failures with other teachers who might learn from them. One framework for facilitating this reflection and sharing is classroom action research. In this talk, I introduce the “why” of classroom action research followed by the basics of “how” teacher-researchers might conduct classroom action research studies. Throughout the talk I give examples from a variety of studies I have completed in my own introductory statistics classroom.

Workshop ~ "Designing a Classroom Action Research Project"
This interactive, hands-on workshop will guide participants through planning their own classroom action research project. Teachers at any level, K – 12 and post-secondary, are welcome to attend. I will guide participants through a series of worksheets designed to facilitate brainstorming and planning. Participants will work individually and collaboratively in small groups to develop a project they can take back to their classroom and implement right away. Participants will also walk away from this workshop with additional handouts and resources for future classroom action research projects. To maintain the collaborations started at this workshop, those participants who are interested will be invited to join an e-mail discussion group hosted by me so they can continue to share ideas and support each other through the classroom research process.    [90-minute workshop, 20-seat maximum]

Virginia Beach City Public Schools

Breakout Session ~ Writing across the curriculum
Most students who take statistics are surprised to discover that communication skills are as important as mathematical ability - maybe more so.  Yet we are not English teachers.  In this session, we will talk about ways to implement writing within the course: use of a journal, challenge worksheets (based on the Triesman model), and quiz and test questions.  Grading suggestions will also be addressed.  Samples of prompts and sample student responses will be provided. 

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, Virginia Beach City Public Schools

Mary Harrison earned an A.B. in mathematics from Goucher College at Baltimore, Md. in 1974 and an M.S. in mathematics from the University of Central Florida at Orlando in 1982.  She first taught high school statistics at Ryan Upper School in Norfolk in 1982 and has taught AP Statistics at Salem High School in Virginia Beach, Va. since 1997.  She also taught introductory statistics at Charleston Southern University at South Carolina.  She developed and presented a statistics workshop for middle school math teachers, is a member of a high school forum that meets monthly during the school year and once during the summer, and has presented a session on using Minitab as an integral part of statistics instruction.  Mary is an avid scouter, having been a Girl Scout leader for the last twelve years and an advisor for a co-ed high adventure Venture Crew for the last four.

Breakout Session ~ "Hands-on Statistics"       
It has been said that students will retain 90% of new material if they have interactive experiences with it.  In this session we will have copies of activities that we have used with our students that illustrate CLT, inference, and confidence intervals.

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, U of California, Berkeley 

Deborah Nolan is Professor and Chair in the Statistics Department at the University of California, Berkeley. She joined the UCB faculty in 1986 after completing her Ph.D. in statistics at Yale University.  Her interests include the use of technology in education and the teaching of statistics.  She has co-authored two books: “Stat Labs: Mathematical Statistics through Applications” (2000, Springer-Verlag) with T.P. Speed and “Teaching Statistics: A Bag of Tricks” (2002, Oxford University Press) with A. Gelman.

Deb has also been involved in encouraging women into research careers in the mathematical sciences: she co-organizes the Undergraduate Summer Program in Statistics, co-directed the Summer Institute for Mathematical Sciences, edited the volume “Women in Mathematics: Scaling the Heights” (1997, MAA), and organized the first New Researchers Meeting of Statisticians and Probabilists.  Deb has received several awards for teaching and mentoring including the University's Distinguished Teaching Award.

Breakout Session ~ "The Elements of Effective, Fun, Classroom Activities"
Classroom demonstrations, exercises, and projects are increasingly popular ways for conveying statistical concepts.  Well-designed activities make effective teaching tools, but poorly designed ones waste precious class time and may confirm student’s preconceptions that statistics is boring and confusing.  In this talk, we dissect at least a dozen demos, classroom exercises, and projects, discussing their strengths and their flaws and making suggestions for improvements. Through these examples we hope to outline some of the key elements of good classroom activities.

Breakout Session ~ Incorporating Computing with R into the Statistics Curriculum
Computing has dramatically changed the practice of statistics in the past twenty years, but its impact on the way we teach and what we teach in our introductory courses has progressed more slowly.  In fact, these changes give us the opportunity to teach statistics in a more exciting and compelling manner, and new computing tools offer valuable aids to help students understand statistical concepts and promote statistical thinking.  We provide ideas for how instructors can incorporate computing into the curriculum, putting it on equal footing with the familiar mathematical tools and formulae, and ideas for how to make modern, fun statistical applications entry points into core statistical concepts.  To accomplish this we use the R language. R offers many advantages to the instructor for developing educational computing materials.  The R language is open source software available for use on Windows, Mac, and Unix operating systems and supported by a worldwide community of statisticians.  Its simple command line interface allows students to quickly learn how to employ basic statistical functions to work creatively with data. Students also learn a valuable skill that they can carry with them in more advanced courses because R offers advanced plotting routines, up-to-date statistical methodologies, and a rich programming environment.  In addition, with R, instructors can build graphical user interfaces to perform customized analyses focused on specific skills, plug R into spreadsheets to take advantage of their simple visual metaphors for computation, and interface R with databases and other languages such as Perl and C++.  In this talk, we provide a brief introduction to the R language, and we cover examples from our teaching of how to use R's command line interface as well as more sophisticated interfaces for these purposes. 

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Norean Sharpe, Babson College 

Norean Sharpe holds degrees in mathematics (B.A. Mount Holyoke College), Biomathematics (M.S., University of North Carolina) and Systems Engineering (Ph.D., University of Virginia).  She has taught courses in mathematics, operations research and statistics at Bowdoin College and Babson College, and was awarded the William Cruickshank Chair at Babson, where she is currently Associate Professor of Statistics and Operations Research.   She has been the driver behind major curriculum developments in the statistics curriculum to use more real data, case studies, written work and laboratory sessions in statistics courses at both Bowdoin and Babson Colleges and recently published a casebook entitled “A Casebook for Business Statistics: Laboratories for Decision Making,” published by John Wiley & Sons.  She is currently an Associate Editor with two publications, referees for numerous journals, and is the author of over 15 refereed journal articles.  Most recently, she has been appointed as Director of Institutional Assessment at Babson College, where she continues to teach using real data from her consulting experiences.

Breakout Session ~ "Assessment, Attitudes and ARTIST"
Numerous assessment approaches exist, and the most preferred are often those that attempt to evaluate a student’s understanding of concepts.  Thus we, as statistics teachers, have invested effort in developing comprehensive assessment measures (such as projects, written problems, and cases).  As a complement to these more holistic assignments, statistics teachers now have an alternative in the new standardized test from ARTIST (Assessment Resource Tools for Improving Statistical Thinking).  The potential of this measurement tool for use with introductory students and sample results will be shared.  In addition, the benefits of using the Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics (SATS) and Survey of Writing Attitudes in Statistics (SWAS) to measure student perceptions will be discussed. 

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, Cornell University  

Cindy van Es

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Roxy Peck, California Polytechnic State University

Roxy Peck has been a professor of statistics at Cal Poly since 1979, serving for six years as Chair of the Statistics Department and currently in her eighth year as Associate Dean of the College of Science and Mathematics.  Nationally known in the area of statistics education, she was made a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1998 and in 2003 she received the American Statistical Association's Founders Award in recognition of her contributions to K-12 and undergraduate statistics education.   In addition to co-authoring textbooks in introductory statistics, she is also editor of a collection of case studies and Statistics:  A Guide to the Unknown, a collection of expository papers that showcase applications of statistical methods.  She is past chair of the joint ASA/NCTM Committee on Curriculum in Statistics and Probability for Grades K-12 and served from 1999 to 2003 as the Chief Faculty Consultant for the Advanced Placement Statistics exam.
Outside the classroom and office, Roxy likes to travel and spends her spare time reading mystery novels.  She also collects Navajo rugs and heads to New Mexico whenever she can find the time.

General Session ~ "How Did Teaching Introductory Statistics Get To Be So Complicated?!?"
Twenty-five years ago, teaching introductory statistics was easy.  Today, the way in which introductory statistics is taught is changing in response to what is known about student learning and things are much more complicated!  This talk describes three lessons learned over the years and explores the implications for the statistics classroom.

Breakout Session ~ "Transforming the Classroom Learning Environment with Student Response Systems"
Have you ever given what you thought was a brilliant, concise and clear presentation only to be disappointed later on an exam when it becomes painfully clear that students just didn't get it?  Ever pose a question to your class only to be met with an uncomfortable silence after which one of the same few students provides an answer?  Ever wonder what the other students are thinking (or even if they are thinking) about the question you asked? Student response systems (sometimes called clickers) provide a way inform classroom instruction while at the same time engaging students in the classroom and helping to keep students motivated and on task. 
Using clickers and a receiver, student response systems allow instructors to poll the class and then quickly and easily view the results (much like the "poll the audience" option on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire).  Using examples that include confidence intervals, linear regression and hypothesis testing, this session will give participants hands-on experience with a student response system and will demonstrate how this technology can be used to assess conceptual understanding, collect classroom data, and keep students actively engaged.

Sharing Session ~ "Sharing Concerns"
This session will provide an opportunity to exchange ideas about the challenges of teaching introductory statistics.  Participants will share their thoughts on content, pedagogy and the importance of engaging students in the learning process.  Learn from the experiences of others, and contribute by sharing efforts that have proven to be particularly helpful and effective strategies for implementing change.

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Breakout Session ~


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