Ellen Gundlach wins the 2010 Grand Prize ASA Hands-On Statistics Activity Competition

08-10-2010

Ellen Gundlach is the Grand Prize winner of the American Statistical Association's Hands-On Statistics Activity competition. The ASA will be participating in the USA Science and Engineering Festival October 23-24, 2010 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. with the intention of stimulating an interest in statistics for thousands of kids. Ellen's original activity involves flying, measuring, graphing, and comparing several different paper airplane designs. This activity was used by STATCOM K-12 Outreach at Spring Fest at Purdue in April 2010 and with the Math/Science/Statistics Club at Frontier Elementary School in 2009.

Ellen is a member of the Department of Statistics, Purdue University. She is a Continuing Lecturer and the Course Coordinator for STAT 301 and 225. Early on she realized, while working in her graduate chemistry lab, that the fun part of science is designing the experiments, analyzing the results, and explaining what those results mean, which is exactly what statisticians do! She has been teaching Statistics at Purdue since 2002. Ellen Gundlach loves to involve students through laughter and movement (activities are even outside!) when learning about how to use Statistics. She regularly incorporates paper airplanes (the winning activity), dice, card tricks, cookies, M&Ms, gummy bear catapults, and ESP testing in her lectures.

Ellen holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from Florida State University and a Masters in Chemistry from The Ohio State University. She is the Associate Editor for MERLOT and CAUSEweb, and the author of several supplements for W.H. Freeman. At Purdue her interests include online teaching, using writing in introductory statistics courses (especially with the Calibrated Peer Review system, using fun hands-on activities in introductory courses, mentoring teaching assistants, being the STATCOM (Statistics in the Community) K-12 Outreach faculty advisor, and finding creative ways to prevent and catch academic misconduct. She is a member of Purdue's Teaching Academy. Ellen is looking forward to the opportunity to fly paper airplanes and share the importance of Statistics with kids on the National Mall in October 2010.