CensusAtSchool 2000

CensusAtSchool 2000 Doreen Connor, Neville Davies and Peter Holmes KEYWORDS: Teaching; Census; Internet; Data handling; School curriculum. Royal Statistical Society Centre for Statistical Education, Nottingham Trent University, England. e-mail: [email protected] Summary This article covers the development of an ambitious Internet-based project to conduct a simple census of the schoolchildren of England and Wales linked to the 2001 UK National Census. ^ INTRODUCTION ^ A sk schoolchildren what a census is and your reward is a sea of blank faces, with maybe a tentative half hand or two up. Ask them about data handling and statistics and the result may be a little better, but meagre excitement is shown. Many lessons in schools generating and using statistics, be it in geography, mathematics or science, tend to use standard data, and are often delivered using unimaginative methods of teaching and learning. In 1990 in New Zealand, 63,500 children were involved in a Children's Census, answering questions ranging from how they got to school to their ethnic group and the number of spiders that could be found in their playground (see e.g. Forbes 1996). This both raised awareness of the New Zealand 1991 National Census and at the same time generated a vast amount of data for schools to use within lessons. The children showed particular interest in comparing their own data with data from other schools and regions and with countrywide statistics. They felt involved in a national event that led to increased resources for data-handling lessons. The New Zealand Children's Census gave the spark of an idea to the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) Education Committee in early 1996, and subsequently the RSS Centre for Statistical Education took responsibility for designing, writing and implementing a similar project in the UK. Teaching material had been produced for schools following the 1981 and 1991 UK censuses, but 66 . Teaching Statistics. Volume 22, Number 3, Autumn 2000 using the adult census data (see e.g. Govier 1991; Turner 1981). Could there be a case for asking the schoolchildren in the UK to produce their own census information, leading to teaching material for schools that had been generated by the pupils themselves? Recent spectacular advances in technology would mean that this information could be disseminated and collected across the Internet. We therefore decided to focus the project around a dedicated Web site, which would encourage teachers and schools, many of them new to being online, to use the Internet. The site's home page is shown in ¢gure 1. The address of the CensusAtSchool Web site is http://www.censusatschool.ntu.ac.uk . Thus the idea of carrying out a census at school was born. Schoolchildren will be asked to collect some data as part of a learning exercise, both in the meaning of a census and in making data handling and statistics more interactive. Teaching material developed from the census will help to increase the use of ICT in classrooms across the land. ^ PARTNERSHIP ^ Starting early in 1999, and subsequently over a 12-month period, a partnership was formed between the RSS Centre for Statistical Education, the UK Maths Year 2000 initiative and the O¤ce for National Statistics (ONS). The ONS in particular could see some huge bene¢ts, especially in relation to the next UK National Census, which is on 29 April 2001. Fig 1. CensusAtSchool Web site home page CensusAtSchool will raise the pro¢le of the 2001 census and foster a positive image through association with a junior version of it that is friendly and up to date. This should help overcome the rather old-fashioned public image of the National Census. The ONS believe the children's census will also have an impact in one of their problem areas ^ that of nonresponse ^ through helping to raise awareness of the importance of the census among parents. It will also a¡ord an opportunity to promote related ONS data products in the schools sector. Maths Year 2000, whose primary aim is to build awareness, knowledge and skills in mathematics for everyone, is closely involved with the CensusAtSchool project. The project is a main topic in the People and Numbers theme in September/October 2000. We also believe that the project will be extendable beyond domestic audiences into the international arena, where census matters are reviewed and discussed amongst the world community of statisticians. Funding for the scheme was secured from the partners. Doreen Connor, a practising teacher and Head of Mathematics at Chilwell School, Nottingham, was appointed to co-ordinate the project. Technical sta¡ at the ONS designed and created the Web site, and outside consultants Internova UK Ltd were engaged to help develop back-end functionality for it. The promotional aims of the project are as follows: . to give advance publicity to the 2001 National Census by involving schools and children, parents and families, the media and the wider community . to demonstrate the purpose and processes involved in the main census. The educational aims are as follows: . to improve pupils' data-handling ability within mathematics and other relevant school subjects . to give pupils insight into the nature of the National Census . to involve pupils in their own national census . to provide subsequent data and contextual material for teachers and pupils to use in their school work across the National Curriculum in all subjects that use data handling . to encourage e¡ective ICT teaching and learning . to encourage teachers to use the Internet for educational purposes. Teaching Statistics. Volume 22, Number 3, Autumn 2000 . 67 Fig 2. Pilot questionnaire for Key Stage 2 68 . Teaching Statistics. Volume 22, Number 3, Autumn 2000 ^ THE PILOT ^ Following much discussion between the partners, it was decided to focus the census on pupils aged 7 to 16, with two separate but very similar questionnaires being written. One of these is aimed at Key Stage 2 (ages 7^11) and the other at Key Stages 3 and 4 (ages 11^16). Each questionnaire comprises 15 or 17 questions, respectively, about the pupils themselves, their household and their school life. Figure 2 shows the pilot questionnaire for Key Stage 2 pupils, which is available from the project's Web site. The Web site was created in April 2000 and schools that volunteered to take part in the pilot were invited to register online. The pilot was concentrated on a few distinct areas using direct mailing to schools, and in some areas via known contacts. The areas involved were Birmingham, York, Lincolnshire and small groups of schools in Nottingham and South Wales. RSS Associate Schools were also invited to participate. In fact, any school which found the Web site and registered was also welcomed. The pilot took place in May 2000, involving over 80 schools. The ratio of Key Stage 2 to Key Stages 3 and 4 schools was approximately 1:4. Figure 3 shows the numbers of pilot schools and the breakdown of numbers of Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3/4 participants. Excel response sheet. Either the class teacher or a trusted pupil, taking on the role of the census enumerator, ¢lled in this sheet. The completed sheet was then e-mailed back to us as an attachment. This caused a few concerns as the pilot census took place in the same week as the spread of the infamous Love Bug virus, also an e-mail attachment! Problems with linking Acorn computers, which are still heavily used in some schools, and various other glitches did not prevent schools returning anywhere between one and 40 Excel ¢les of data to the CensusAtSchool o¤ce via the Internet. ^ DEVELOPMENT ^ At the time of writing (May 2000), the Web site is being updated and expanded, with areas given over to results/analysis and curriculum activities. We expect the pilot data to be analysed using standard statistical software packages, such as MINITAB. Particular importance is attached to providing information which will allow schools to make comparisons between local, regional and national data. Con¢dentiality of individuals' information has to be protected, and so the lowest area of public access to the data base is at postcodedistrict level. Each school was asked to keep a copy of its own individual school data so that the comparisons can be made. Curriculum activities in the areas of mathematics, geography, history, ICT, science and key skills are being designed and will be posted on the Web site from time to time until the end of the project in March 2001. These activities include a lot of links to other useful Web sites, and practical use of new technologies such as the graphical calculator. The data are intended to be accessible to all school pupils from Key Stage 2 right up to A level (ages 16^18). In October 2000, as near to 6 months prior to the National Census 2001 as possible, the full CensusAtSchool will take place. We intend to try to involve as many of the 7 to 16 year olds in England and Wales as we can. After all, everybody counts in the adult census! Fig 3. Pilot schools: breakdown of participants We sent hard copy of the questionnaires and teachers notes to schools, but they were encouraged to use the Web site to download the documents as well, especially in the case of the Already interest has been shown in this project from far beyond our shores, with the possibility of Australia and New Zealand carrying out a similar census using the technology we have developed in the UK. Teaching Statistics. Volume 22, Number 3, Autumn 2000 . 69 Turner, D. (1981). People in Britain. O¤ce of Population Censuses and Surveys. Govier, H. (1991). Census 1991 Teachers Pack. O¤ce of Population Censuses and Surveys. References Forbes, S. (1996). Raising Statistical Awareness. Teaching Statistics, 18(3), 66^69. " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " "H ISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE Gilbert's Sine Distribution A.W.F. Edwards KEYWORDS: Teaching; Sine distribution; G.K. Gilbert. University of Cambridge, England. e-mail: [email protected] Summary The sine distribution introduced by the astronomer G.K. Gilbert in 1892 is revived as an interesting example of an elementary continuous distribution suitable for teaching purposes. ^ INTRODUCTION ^ T he sine distribution de¢ned by the density function f x† ˆ sin 2x 0  x  p=2 does not appear to be described in any book on distribution theory, yet it has a long history and an elementary application, which it is the purpose of this note to describe. ^ DERIVATION ^ Gilbert (1895) derived the sine distribution in a discussion of the origin of the Moon's craters. If 70 . Teaching Statistics. Volume 22, Number 3, Autumn 2000 craters are caused by meteorite impacts and their characteristics determined by the angle of impact, it is important to know the distribution of these angles on the hypothesis of meteorites striking the Moon from random directions. In his presidential address to the Washington Philosophical Society on 10 December 1892, Gilbert said (referring to ¢gure 1, his ¢gure 10): The angle at which each one strikes the moon's surface depends upon the nearest distance of its produced orbit from the moon's center, and is entirely independent of the direction from which it approaches. The number of those falling on the upper zone is measured by the area of the small circle. The number of those falling on the whole hemisphere is measured by the base of the hemisphere. The ratio of the one to the other, or the proportionate number of meteors having an incidence angle of less than any given angle, i, is equal to sin 2 i.