Last year I made use of a Teacher’s Study Award to undertake a post-graduate diploma in applied statistics at Otago University. As someone who teaches maths and statistics to secondary students it was a great opportunity to upskill in statistics and become more computer literate. As the diploma also involves statistical practice I was lucky enough to work with Peter Johnstone and Roger Littlejohn at Invermay.

Peter introduced me to CAST-computer assisted statistics learning - developed by Doug Stirling at Massey. We have now added CAST to our computer network at Otago Boys. I am looking forward to using it with my Year 13 statistics students. At the moment we spend one period a week in the computer room. So far we are exploring what we can do in statistics with Excel, which I must admit after my year at Otago is a lot more than I thought.

Also at Invermay I had the opportunity to observe Roger working in a consulting capacity with scientists. It was fascinating as well as very insightful to see statistician and scientist working together around a computer screen. I have gained a new perspective into how statisticians actually work which I hope will rub off in my teaching.

At Otago I was the first statistics teacher to make use of a Teacher’s Study Award to do a post-graduate diploma in applied statistics. When this diploma was set up it was thought it would appeal to teachers. It is good to hear that another maths teacher is doing the course this year. I would certainly recommend it to anyone thinking of doing it. There is a wide variety of papers from different subject areas that you can choose from. I particularly enjoyed the Public Health paper Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

With Level 3 NCEA to be introduced next year I hope more teachers consider doing this very enjoyable and worthwhile diploma.