STATCOM P-12 Outreach Team Participates in Spring Fest 2007

The STATCOM P-12 Outreach team participated in this year's cold and snowy Spring Fest on April 14th and 15th, 2007 at Purdue University. This was their third year to participate in the event. The STATCOM P-12 Outreach team is run by Statistics in the Community (STATCOM), a volunteer community outreach organization directed and staffed by graduate students in the Department of Statistics. With support from the Department of Statistics and Ellen Gundlach, the team set up several activities on the Memorial Mall at Purdue University to increase interest and involvement in statistics through the use of hands-on activities. The STATCOM P-12 Outreach team set up two activities, a genetic activity and a sampling activity, for Spring Fest this year.

Genetics Activity
Using eye color as an example, participants could learn how dominant and recessive traits are passed down through the generations. This often led to discussions about other statistical topics.

Sampling Activity
The Outreach team displayed a large picture with a very large number of people included. The participants could not be expected to count all of the people, so a grid of 36 rectangular regions was placed over the picture. The importance of random sampling (unbiased) was discussed, then the participant chose three regions by rolling dice. They were shown how to use that information to infer how many people were in the entire picture. This led to discussions about sampling and randomness.

In addition to the two activities, the Outreach team entered data for the annual Spring Fest cricket spitting competition again.

Volunteers
The brave volunteers who faced the cold and snow at this year's Spring Fest were: Tim Clough, Jesse Cunningham, Kitaka Donovan, Alex Lipka, Kelvin Ma, Shraddha Mehta, Kendra McPheeters, Gayla Olbricht, Yangfang Pang, Ivan Vassilev, and Cheng Zheng. The Outreach team would also like to thank Ellen and Phillip Gundlach for their help.

April 2007