Getting Kids Involved With Analytics

[Levy2725]

Hey all, this is Ian from Hickory-High, looking for feedback on a project.

I pay the bills as an elementary school teacher. Another educator and I have been working on a project that helps students develop math and science skills, construct arguments and conduct research, with basketball statistics as the medium.

We're in the beginning stages of an educational enterprise that we hope will grow, but today we launched the first phase. We're starting with a series of analytic challenges aimed at elementary, middle and high school students. The challenges will ask students to construct a logical argument and support it with statistical data. We've also added a series of scaffolded hints to go with the challenges, which will hopefully guide students through some of the conceptual reasoning behind different basketball statistics.

The first challenge was posted today - "Who was the best offensive player in the NBA during the 2011-2012 season?" We've purposefully left it open ended to encourage responses of all kinds. We're thinking involvement could range from a 4th grade simply selecting based on points per game, all the way up to some more sophisticated analysis of efficiency from a high school student.

I doubt many members of this community are still high-school aged (if you are please participate!) but we'd love to get some feedback from the analytic community, especially anyone here who happens to work in education. If anyone is interested, please take a look and let us know what you think - http://www.hickory-high.com/?page_id=4662

Thanks,
Ian

[Crow]

Good luck with the project Ian. It could be a very worthwhile endeavor.

Maybe some organization could help you with prizes (ESPN, Sloan Conference, etc.)

Any reason you left this site off your short list of resources?

[bbstats]

Forwarded this to my sister (teaches 5th grade).

Sounds exciting!!

[Levy2725]

Thanks guys!

Crow, leaving this site off the list of resources was a careless oversite. It's on there now, although I imagine a lot of the discussion here may be daunting for kids just getting started with stats.

We would love feedback as the project develops. If anyone else has thoughts as you look it over, please send them along.