In early April, Ms. Lewis's Grade 8 students explored a unit on Graphing with an introduction to Statistics. In class, they spoke about implicit bias and covert and overt racism in Canada. Students learned about the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and how it has been used in scientific research to measure individuals’ implicit biases. They were assigned a task, to find data on occurrences of racism in Canada, with a specific focus on Halifax. This data will eventually be used to consolidate their learning between social sciences and mathematics.
Dr. Patrick Carolan was invited to speak to the class about his research and how he generally uses statistics on a daily basis. Dr. Coralan is a Lecturer in the Psychology Department at Saint Mary's University, teaching courses in Cognitive Psychology, Learning, Thinking and Reasoning, and the History of Psychology.
The overall goal of this experience is to have students be exposed to statistics and research in a meaningful way. This lesson showed the students how math and statistics are used across many fields of work, and how it is applied to different scenarios in our everyday lives.
