Minute to Win It

The Minute to Win It games project grew out of an unmet need -- to help students reach a deeper understanding of inferential statistics. As I became the full-time teacher of the Fall 2011 statistics course at Byron High School, I found myself struggling to convey the purpose behind the otherwise meaningless calculations we did with confidence intervals and hypothesis tests. While desperately searching for meaningful sources of data that kids could relate to, I realized that simple, competitive games could be very engaging while providing ample data for analysis.

Backing up a moment, this unit was based around five chapters from the class textbook (The Basic Practice of Statistics):

• • Two-way tables: organize counts of data affected by multiple categorical variables.

  • Binomial distribution: finding the probability of events with a fixed probability and number of attempts.

  • Confidence intervals: given the population standard deviation, challenge the mean with a new set of sample data points and find a range where you believe the true population mean falls.

  • Significance tests: given the population standard deviation, challenge the given population mean with the mean of SRS data. Use this test to determine if the results found are statistically likely to happen by chance.

  • Error and power: when confidence intervals and significance tests can be used, the types of mistakes that occur, and the probabilities of various errors.

In addition, a component based on the central limit theorem, which is key to the understanding of all inferential statistics, was added to give students a time consuming but hands-on understanding of how and why we can make certain assumptions with confidence intervals and tests of significance. The final unit assessment was a open-response test on the five chapters.

After using a combination of lecture and class simulations to teach the material from each chapter, I started the Minute to Win It games with the students. Students self-selected into teams of 3-4 and selected a game they wanted to play from NBC's Minute to Win It TV show. The show gives contestants 1 minute to complete a goofy challenge using common supplies. Games that students picked included balancing 6 Oreos on your forehead ("Chocolate Unicorn"), bouncing a tennis ball into equally-spaced garage cans, and shaking frantically to drive up the count on pedometers attached to each limb. On the game days, students rotated with their teams between games so everyone could play each other's game. Each team kept a detailed Google Spreadsheet of all of their data for later analysis. After the games, I asked each team to write a technical paper, complete with elements from each of the five chapters we studied, about their experiment. I provided students with an example paper that I wrote and a very detailed rubric to guide their work. I also commented on each team's paper daily.

For a detailed look into the unit, see each of the major subpages:

• • Standards and objectives: what I set out for students to accomplish throughout the entire unit.

  • Assessment: how I measured student performance towards the objectives.

  • Lessons and learning experiences: what I did to teach students the material.

  • Student papers: the iterative process students went through and the comments I added at each stage.

  • Final reflection: all the things I learned that guided the development of my Spring 2012 statistics course.

Students and Classroom Environment

This is an elective math course for juniors and seniors at Byron High School. There are 27 students in class. I have a boy and a girl who frequently score 100% on exams, and I have approximately 5 students who frequently score in the C-range. This class was initially designed for students who were not ready for pre-calculus or calculus, but who still wanted to take a math class in their junior or senior year. However, over the years more top-end students wanted statistics before college, making this a fairly mixed group.

Byron High School runs on a block schedule – all periods are 90 minutes and year-long courses are completed in a single semester. The primary benefit is the continuity of work time in class, but it has the drawback of forcing us to move through content in a very short number of days.

We frequently use the nearby computer lab when we are writing, using spreadsheets, or using online applications. It is usually available when we need it. Additionally, the school allows students to bring in their own smartphones or iPod touch devices for educational use. The school recently started a pilot using iPads and Android Zoom tablets (total of 5 in class), and the math department purchased 5 floating iPod touches. This is all in addition to the 3 laptops in the back of the room. With this many options, every student has access to an internet-enabled device when needed.

Outside of the physical classroom, the online classroom environment lives on the school’s installation of Moodle. The Moodle site hosts additional resources for each chapter covered in the textbook, including the solutions manual to the homework problems. I created an additional online resource, a wiki, used for re-learning old material and studying for the chapter exam.

Unit Sources

Faulkner, T. (2011, November 1). Math Teacher at Byron High School. (A. Pethan, Interviewer)

Moore, D. S. (2007). The Basic Practice of Statistics. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company.

NBC. (n.d.). Minute to Win It Games -- How To. Retrieved November 29, 2011, from NBC: http://www.nbc.com/minute-to-win-it/how-to/

Warneke, R. (2011, November 1). Math Teacher at Byron High School. (A. Pethan, Interviewer)

Warneke, R. (2011, November 1). Unit 3 chapter quizzes and final test. Byron, MN.