Our Activities
April 6, 2019: SpringFest 2019
At SpringFest 2019, StatCom took one small step, and kids and parents all took giant leaps. Attendees to SpringFest that stopped by the StatCom booth were encouraged to put on a space helmet and jump as far as they could from a standing start. Aspiring astronauts aged 1 to 52 leaped a median distance of 4 feet, and as far as 8 feet, each person springing forth with dreams of a moonwalk in their mind.
Additionally, participants and many of the adults that came by the booth, eagerly estimated the heights of the Purdue Bell Tower and the World’s Largest Drum, in hopes that the guesses would demonstrate a “Wisdom of the crowd” effect. Of 185 guesses, the crowd had a median guess of 120 feet for the Bell Tower and 8 feet for the World’s Largest Drum, not too far off from the true figures of 160 feet and 7 feet three inches, respectively. Visualizations of this data, as well as the app used for guessing, can be seen at https://statcompurdue.shinyapps.io/giantleaps/.
September 22, 2018: Purdue Homecoming (150th anniversary)
StatCom P-12 Outreach participated in Homecoming in 2018 by having inquisitive kids aged 1-92 flips coins to simulate a random walk to whet their appetite for probability. Participants would then move yarn around a grid according to where the walk took them. Popcorn was also served and popped according to a Poisson process. (Random walk PDF)
April 12, 2018: STEM Conference for Kids
Center for Advancing the Teaching and Learning of STEM hosted event for Tippecanoe School Corporation 6th graders focusing primarily on engineering experiences. StatCom hosted a two-hour workshop where students constructed paper airplanes based on three different designs, then were separated into groups and measured how far their planes flew. Students were asked to calculate averages for each plane design and each member of their group, and were also asked to consider how the experiment was designed. Students engaged with the last question, discussing the limits of only flying the planes once per person, per design, and differences in student construction and design difficulty which could impact flight distance.
April 15, 2017: Engineering and Science Extravaganza Workshop
Event held through the Latinos in Science and Engineering student organization, ESE promotes various STEM fields through hands-on activities for students in the Lafayette area. StatCom hosted a one-hour workshop where local 4th and 5th graders used playing cards to play games that helped them practice calculating basic statistical measures, such as mean, median and mode.
April 8, 2017: Spring Fest 2017
StatCom P-12 Outreach Team volunteered by interacting with local alumni, families and children and showing them the joys of statistics by performing some simple statistical demonstrations. The demonstrations were the Monty Hall problem and the R Shiny App.
April 8, 2016: Spring Fest 2016
November 7, 2015: College of Science Booth at Homecoming
April 18, 2015: Purdue Spring Fling
STATCOM P-12 Outreach team volunteered by interacting with local alumni, families and children and showing them the joys of statistics by performing some simple statistical demonstrations. The activities preformed were Matching Socks and Linear Leap.
November 11, 2014: Purdue Math Field Day
Math Field Day is held to promote mathematics to 8th grade students in the area. The students participate in multiple math related activities and are graded as a team. STATCOM P-12 Outreach team assisted by running a simple regression activity (Linear Leap) where the kids measured their heights and standing jump distances. The kids were then asked to construct a fitted line on the team's data and predict the jump length of a new individual.
October 4, 2014: Celebrate Science Indiana Fair
StatCom P-12 Outreach team volunteered to staff the table hosted by the Central Indiana Chapter of the American Statistical Association at Celebrate Science Indiana. The event was held in the Marsh Pavilion at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. Volunteers assisted interested kids in a statistical/probability demonstration and discussed with the kids/parents the importance of statistics.
April 12, 2014: Purdue Spring Fest
STATCOM P-12 Outreach team volunteered by interacting with local alumni, families and children and showing them the joys of statistics by performing some simple statistical demonstrations. The activities performed were Mean Darts Scores and Population Estimation.
April 4, 2014: Hoosier Science and Engineering Fair
STATCOM P-12 Outreach team volunteered by helping in the judging process alongside the Central Indiana Chapter of the American Statistical Association. Volunteers helped recognize projects that demonstrated the best use of statistics. There were over 200 projects reviewed.
Archive for activities prior to 2010.