[Edu-sig] probability and statistics demo for kids

[Blake]

The programs / code examples you all have proposed look great.

Perry, I think your idea to teach Bayesian statistics to 6-8th graders
sounds great!

Just wanted to chime in on a different angle of this: the relevance of the
problem(s) that you address.

Here is a video of one of my former high school teachers explaining how he
teaches reasoning, skepticism, and using probability in the real world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2HWE6qQ2kI

He gives an example of using Bayes Rule which could be a great example for
you to use, Perry. And he shows how you can intuitively, visually
understand what Bayes Rule tells us for that example, without having to go
through the calculations.


At the end of that video, he gives a curriculum overview for a year-long
course he has developed, called "Human Reasoning", which is about thinking
in the real world. I would love to see more people teach the way he does!


Curious if people have other examples of this kind of thing, or have ideas
of how to use computer simulations specifically for teaching this
real-world-focused perspective on mathematics.


--
Blake Elias

On Fri, Feb 23, 2018 at 2:44 PM, Wes Turner <wes.turner at gmail.com> wrote:

> "Seeing Theory: A visual introduction to probability and statistics"
> http://students.brown.edu/seeing-theory/
> https://github.com/seeingtheory/Seeing-Theory
>
> These are JavaScript widgets, so not Python but great visual examples that
> could be implemented with ipywidgets and some JS.
>
> explorable.es has a whole catalog of these:
> http://explorabl.es/math/
>
> Think Stats 2nd edition is free:
> http://greenteapress.com/wp/think-stats-2e/
>
> The source is also free:
> https://github.com/AllenDowney/ThinkStats2
> https://github.com/AllenDowney/ThinkStats2/blob/master/code/chap01ex.ipynb
> https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/AllenDowney/
> ThinkStats2/tree/master/code/
>
>
> On Friday, February 23, 2018, kirby urner <kirby.urner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm a big fan of Galton Boards:
>>
>> https://youtu.be/3m4bxse2JEQ  (lots more on Youtube)
>>
>> Python + Dice idea = Simple Code
>>
>> http://www.pythonforbeginners.com/code-snippets-source-code/
>> game-rolling-the-dice/
>>
>> I'd introduce the idea that 1 die = Uniform Probability but 2+ dice =
>> Binomial distribution (because there are more ways to roll some numbers,
>> e.g. 7 than others, e.g. 12).
>>
>> A Python generator for Pascal's Triangle (= Binomial Distribution):
>>
>> def pascal():
>>     row = [1]
>>     while True:
>>         yield row
>>         row = [i+j for i,j in zip([0]+row, row+[0])]
>>
>>
>> gen = pascal()
>>
>> for _ in range(10):
>>     print(next(gen))
>>
>> [1]
>> [1, 1]
>> [1, 2, 1]
>> [1, 3, 3, 1]
>> [1, 4, 6, 4, 1]
>> [1, 5, 10, 10, 5, 1]
>> [1, 6, 15, 20, 15, 6, 1]
>> [1, 7, 21, 35, 35, 21, 7, 1]
>> [1, 8, 28, 56, 70, 56, 28, 8, 1]
>> [1, 9, 36, 84, 126, 126, 84, 36, 9, 1]
>>
>> Kirby
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 20, 2018 at 6:12 PM, Perry Grossman <
>> perrygrossman2008 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I am thinking of doing a simplified interactive presentation on
>>> probability and Bayesian statistics for my kids' elementary school.
>>> I think it would probably be best for 6-8th graders, but there might be
>>> ways to do this for younger students.
>>> I'd like to run some Python code to show probability distributions and
>>> statistics.
>>>
>>> I am thinking of simplified examples from these works:
>>>
>>> Maybe the dice problem, or the cookie problem here:
>>> Allen Downey - Bayesian statistics made simple - PyCon 2016
>>> <https://youtu.be/TpgiFIGXcT4?t=1741>
>>>
>>> A friend also suggested doing an analysis of how many cards (e.g.
>>> pokemon) that one might need to buy to colleft the whole set.
>>>
>>> Any suggestions on how to make this manageable approachable for kids?
>>>
>>> Perry
>>>
>>> PS:  right now I'm going through Allen Downey's tutorial on Bayesian
>>>> stats
>>>> using the above mentioned tools, from Pycon 2016:
>>>> https://youtu.be/TpgiFIGXcT4
>>>> I attended this conference, but didn't manage to make this tutorial.
>>>>
>>>> [1]  I've shared this before, still relevant:
>>>> https://medium.com/@kirbyurner/is-code-school-the-new-high-s
>>>> chool-30a8874170b
>>>>
>>>> Also this blog post:
>>>> http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2018/02/magic-squares.html
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