Enthused students!

I thought I would write this post about the topics my students have chosen for their IAs this year. I am busy re writing the IA section of the website (Big job) which will include some new resources about how to help students get solid, focussed ideas for their projects. I have been testing the resources out and am quite pleased with the results so far! Here is a run down of some of the ideas they have come up with.

No Apologies

I have read the examiners reports about Non Stats projects and understood them. I do offer and encourage students the opportunity to branch out and recognise how much potential there is. The fat remains though, that, from my experience, students find statsitcis comfortably the most relevantly applicable aspect of the course. They find that statistics offer them an opportunity to explore areas of interest to them and get enthused by the idea. We may like to say more variety and we may have seen a hundred projects about GDP and so on, but for our students it is the first time and they are having exactly the experience the program sets out to offer. So I make no apology that the ideas presented here are all stats based. the new resources will , however, try to offer more help and encouragement to students to explore different avenues so that students can see all the potential.

I am also determined to make sure that all ideas come from students themselves so that they are motivated to work on a topic that interests them.

Projects

Cyber attacks - What is the damaged caused, the danger associated. Who gets targetted and when? This promises to be really interesting and the data has all the potential it needs.

How effective is the TB vaccination - Never seen this one before. Comparing data about prevalanece of the vaccination and the disease along with other factors that might affect both of those.

Dr Who Episodes - Which ones are most popular and why? Some good data here could give the show producers some useful tips on the formula for success!

The Happy Planet Index - This is a really interesting organisation that I have been aware of for a while, but I have never seen the data that this student uncovered before and look forwrad to some of the outcomes.

Homework - although this is a stayed theme, this student looks determined to get some really rigours data on what is going on here. I for one am keen to see the results, because I think perception might be different from reality. This data collection is being well planned so that students in our school will log the time they spend over the period of a week. I have a feeling I might be taking this oroject to a staff meeting!

Flexibility - Nice! This will be a primary data collection exercise exploring how flexible we are and what the factors that cause that might be. 

US Election results - Wow - some fascinating figures coming out of this one so far on the 2016 Presidential election. This is the kind of work journalists are doing everywhere (and often badly). it couldn't be more relevant.

University enrollment - What factors affect this in different parts of the world.

Cancer type prevalance - This promises to be fairly sobering reading so far. Personally I wonder what differences there are between reality and public perception on this topic.

Murder rate - I have seen this as a bsis before, but this one will focus on links with urbanisation which could be intriguing

The Rolling Stone top 100 songs - A music fan will be breaking these down to figure out what they have in common - or not as the case may be. 

and seven more.....

I know it will be hard work and won't all go well, but I like this stage when students seem genuinely interested in the idea of a mathematical investigation.....

Work on the re write of the IA section continues.......