Two winters ago, the Joint Mathematical Meetings were in town. Not only did I attend super cool sessions, a few AP Calc students made it to one of the programs. PLUS there were the luscious convention freebies — the ever fashionable plastic pocket protector with the American Mathematical Society logo, and the extremely useful “Honk if You Believe the Riemann Hypothesis” bumper sticker.
(“Honk! Honk!”)

Last summer, the Joint Statistical Meetings came to town, and I attended a session featuring the work of Statistics without Borders (check us out on Facebook), focusing on the work of statisticians who use quantitative information to promote human rights and to pinpoint violations. I have used materials from that workshop in AP Stat. The haul from that convention was a totally awesome Joint Statistical Meetings tote bag AND an American Statistical Association denim shirt (OK, I paid for that one), which you can see me modeling here. (Hmm…why didn’t I slip in the plastic pocket protector? Oh well….)

Last week, the National Center for Health Statistics held their 50th Anniversary Meetings in town, and I attended a workshop entitled “The Ambiguity of Race”. While US statistical agencies endeavor to report social, medical, demographic and economic data with racial and ethnic breakdowns, categorizing Americans by race and ethnicity is challenging and constantly shifting. I learned, for example, that race options presented in Census forms have NEVER been the same in any US Census, since its inception in 1790. Moreover, only in the last two censuses have Americans been able to identify as multiracial. Each Census’ list of races and ethnicities depends not only on research objectives and on population trends, but also on the political whims of members of Congress who jockey (under threat of budget cuts, sometimes!) for inclusion of categories favoring their constituents. Today, about 1 of every 50 Americans is multiracial, as are 7.2% of American households (American Community Survey, 2008).

The National Center for Health Statistics uses death rates to estimate life expectancy for the US, broken out by gender and by race (white/black only, plus overall US population). Death rates are reported as number of deaths per 100,000 population. The numerator of the rates, number of deaths, includes a designation of race that is, naturally, not self-reported. Doctors and even funeral directors report this information. In contrast, the denominator, population, relies on self-reported Census summaries of Americans by race. This inconsistency creates inaccuracies and in particular, will make it difficult to further explore the outcomes and wellbeing of America’s multiracial population, whose deaths are likely to be misclassified by funeral directors. Producing life tables for US Hispanics is also challenging, but is a research priority at NCHS. At one NCHS conference session I attended, a researcher spoke about using statistical techniques, such as logit models and ‘bridging’ with Medicare data to recapture information, to estimate life expectancy for Hispanics.

Statistical measurement of race and ethnicity has been important topic for AP Statistics at Burke after the AP exam in April; I can’t wait to share what I learned at the NCHS conference. Hmm! Probably the students can’t wait till the exam is over, too…

Oh yes… I should report on the haul from this one…all freebies! A NCHS logo umbrella, 2 thumb drives, a National Survey of Family Growth ruler (English AND metric!), copies of a statistical report on teenage mortality from automobile accidents that I intend to present in hushed, subversive tones to my students, several disks of data for our library, and a classroom set of the latest (beautiful, glossy, colorful) “Health USA” statistical report, for use teaching statistical graphics in AP Stat and in next spring’s Statistics elective.

Ariella Gladstein (Burke ’07, Beloit ’11) and Rachel Braun (Math Dept) had a reunion of sorts in July, enjoying some chai (latte) and chi (statistics).    Ariella took Linear Algebra at U Maryland this summer, and discovered some cool matrix connections to least-squares regression estimates that she remembered from her AP Statistics days with Rachel.   Girls just want to have geek fun, of course, so they met at Starbucks to take a second look at least-squares regression techniques, now illuminated by Ariella’s more recent prowess in calculus, matrix algebra, and further studies in statistics.  The applications to Ariella’s passion for genetics are extensive.

This comic strip  –  http://www.xkcd.com/747/ — was not helpful as the two debated whether they were geeks or nerds.  They did agree that multivariate statistics — an extension of topics in AP Stat –  is pretty cool, though.

Next was a diversion into a kind of symbolic representation of numbers known as ‘Harvey Balls’, convenient as the clock in the math classroom represents the hours in Harvey Balls rather than numbers.  (This effort also led to the accidental but entirely humorous discovery of an individual whose name, actually, was indeed “Harvey Ball”, and whose gift to civilization was the ubiquitous yellow Smiley Face.)

Finally, they learned how to solve addition problems with a Japanese abacus, known as a soroban.  Pairs of students then faced off at the abacus, racing to solve addition problems.   Check out these photos, so you can vicariously experience our ecstasy of victory and agony of defeat.

Now you can ask any AP Calc student this joke:

Why couldn’t the number theorist tell the difference between Halloween and Christmas?

Answer: Because OCT 31 = DEC 25.

Ed: Thanks to our own Lobachevsky for the math review!  Btw – to brush up on your ‘New Math’ – here’s Tom Lehrer:

Dr. Geller’s talk was entitled “Bistatistics: A Personal Journey” and she spoke about how she came to study the subject and pursue a career path in biostatistics.  She was kind enough to research the AP Statistics curriculum in preparing her remarks, so the examples she gave, involving experimental design and questionnaire development, covered topics familiar to the students.

Eric, Dr. Geller, and Rachel (who is happily wearing her American Statistical Association logo shirt for the occasion)

Participants were:
Nora “no ‘At Last’ on this one because the digits of Pi never end” S.   ’10
Rachel “Lady PiPi” Braun
dancers Brandy Wilson and Michelle Johncock

Zach N. ’14 recited the digits!

Theme:
‘Caught in a Bad Romance’ — Lady Gaga
morphed into
“We’re not Bad at Math” — Lady PiPi

Highlight of the lyrics:
“I want your ruler, your vertical stick, in centimeters if you want metric”

Stacy Smith arranged for pie for the school to eat, bought every last pie at her local Safeway and had to fight with the manager to be allowed to buy out the store.  Heroic!!!!

Alex White operated the power point and the music.

Hugh K. ’10 filmed the event — look for the youtube video once the editing is done.

In honor of tonight’s Winter Formal, Burke.Word, scientific journal that it is, presents the discovery of the mathematical formula for determining your chances for finding love.  Peter Backus, an American economist toiling away for the past 3 years on his PhD in England (apparently in a library dungeon), had so much free time on his hands because of his lack of romance over that period, researched and came up with the equation d’amour.

His mathematical ode to love is based on the Drake Equation, which is normally used to estimate the number of highly evolved civilizations that may exist in our galaxy.  Seems about right.  He re-engineered the equation slightly to account for one’s location, situation and criteria for a significant other.  His results, you ask?  Of the roughly 30 million women in the U.K., only 26 are potential mates for Backus. His conclusion: “On a given night in London, there is a 0.0000034 percent chance of meeting one of these special people.”  And yet, there must be some other celestial magic in this equation that makes these odds work out for him and us other human variables, given that he’s had a girlfriend for 6 months after completing his loving work.

Check this out…..

WAMU Report on Burke and Abolition Day

Pictures on Flickr about the Day

[Update: Turns out that my link to the Pi versus e debate post was no good.  It's now fixed.  Sorry Rachel - I hope this doesn't figure into my grade.]

pie vs eclairs

It’s become an annual end-of-year event  in AP Calculus: the pi vs e debate. This year one student held out for “i” (get real, Sasha! …..that was a really bad math joke, by the way), and debate around the room was vigorous.  Most arguments featured information about mathematical properties or historical understandings of these numbers, but the final investigations were empirical, as students sampled pie and “e”clairs.

Editor: Check out more photos of the calculus cage match at BurkePix.