Category: Student Events

Title:  There’s Nothing Common About It

Abstract:  Training yourself to think like a child is often counterintuitive and surprisingly difficult.  My research focuses on helping preservice teachers analyze and learn from children’s mathematical thinking.  For this talk, we will focus on different types of story problems as described in the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and discuss how children change their solution approaches depending on the situation presented in the problem.  We will watch videos of children solving different story problems and will consider various samples of written student work.  Audience participation will be encouraged.

Title:  Monkeying around in South Africa

Abstract:  As part of my sabbatical last year, I spent 5 weeks in South Africa at the Unizulu Science Centre in Richards Bay.  One of the highlights of my stay were the many encounters with vervet monkeys, both in the flesh and abstractly in mathematical problems.  They insist on playing a role in this talk.

The science center serves the some 700 rural schools in the province of Kwazulu-Natal.  The level of mathematics achievement by the students at the rural public schools in South Africa is among the lowest in the world.  The science center was charged by the Department of Education to conduct teacher training in geometry for the school teachers in the province.

During my talk, I will discuss my past and future role in the initiatives of the science center and will talk about some of my experiences

Title:  A Crash-Course in Sports Statistics

Abstract:  The path to becoming successful in the sporting world is substantially different from that of more traditional fields.  Whether you’re an athlete or an analyst, coursework and university degrees matter much less being able to effectively demonstrate you ability to have a positive impact on a team or organization.  In this talk, I will discuss my path to becoming successful in the world of statistics in sports.  I will give a crash-course in the fundamentals of using statistical analysis in sports, discussing important concepts such as repeatability, replacement, and prediction.  I will also touch on more academic topics that are extremely important in the sporting world, such as programming techniques, data visualization, professional communication (writing and speaking).  Finally, I’ll discuss my personal experiences from working with professional sports teams, coaching ice hockey, and teaching students about statistics.  Although my work is primarily in hockey, I will also discuss the use of statistics and quantitative analysis in football, baseball, and basketball.