SIGMAA Statistics Education Business Meeting Minutes

January 14, 2010 5:45-7:15 pm

Welcome – Michael Posner

Introduction of Officers: Michael Posner, chair; Pat Humphrey, past-chair; Nancy Boynton, chair-elect; Dorothy Anway, Treasurer; Cora Neal, Secretary; Brian Gill, soon-to-be chair-elect; Sue Schou, soon-to-be treasurer

Introduction of attendees

Call for a webmaster. This is an excellent opportunity to get actively involved.

Secretary’s Report – Cora Neal

Members are encouraged to consider running for secretary next year

Cora is willing to organize a newsletter, with input from members. A volunteer to organize the newsletter would be greatly appreciated.

Nancy Boynton presented the minutes from last year’s meeting. They were approved unanimously by the members.

Next year the meeting minutes will be sent out to members shortly before the business meeting for review.

Treasurer’s Report – Dorothy Anway

The budget report was presented.

Since many members pay dues when registering for the Joint Meetings, it is expected that about $600 in dues will be coming in shortly.

The SIGMAA stat ed account contains approximately $24,500.

MAA has increased SIGMAA dues. Previously members paid $10 and MAA took $1. Now members pay $12 and MAA takes $3. So the SIGMAA continues to receive $9 per member.

Reporting from MAA continues to be inconsistent.

Discussion – Michael Posner

MAA is organizing a strategic working group to look at the structure of the SIGMAAs. The group is tasked to present their conclusions at MathFest 2011.

The Dex Whitinghill Award for Outstanding Presentation is awarded to Anna **** for her talk “Achieving Statistical Literacy”. Unfortunately, Anna was unable to attend this year’s meeting.

The executive committee, with support from previous winners, has decided that a presenter can win the Dex Whitinghill Award only once.

It was suggested that SIGMAA stat ed give out more awards, perhaps an award specifically for junior faculty or outstanding paper in statistical education. The executive committee will discuss this option.

Last year SIGMAA stat ed members judged statistically relevant undergraduate posters. Award winners were Thomas Wolfe for his poster **** and Michael Nova for his poster ***. This year the judging was coordinated with Diana Thomas and in the future we hope that students will be able to self-identify posters that would be eligible for our award.

We own the web address SIGMAAstated.org. Currently this address points to a website hosted at Villanova. MAA may be willing to host SIGMAA websites at some point. Perhaps the strategic working group will make some decisions on this.

At last year’s meeting, members approved money to support ICOTS. It was decided that the money should directly benefit SIGMAA stat ed members. The current budget allows up to $3000 to be divided between 6 members to help with travel expenses to ICOTS. Members receiving money would be asked to report back to the membership either by organizing a panel discussion on the state of international statistics education or writing an article for the newsletter.

Charter changes were sent to members via email. John McKenzie caught some typos, which were corrected.

Future Meetings

MathFest, Pittsburg, August 5-9, 2010

CPS: Innovative Ideas for Introductory Statistics Courses

JMM, New Orleans, January 5-8, 2011

CPS: Alternative Approaches to Introductory Statistics

We could offer a mini-course for new teachers of intro stats. Michael has started discussions with SIGMAA bio about jointly sponsoring a panel on teaching biostatistics. Other panel ideas were teaching intro stat on-line, ideas for classes beyond intro stats, and what to do for a stats course for students who have taken AP stats.

The executive committee suggested that the SIGMAA pay half of the JMM registration fees for officers who are not receiving travel funds from their departments. In general members seemed to support this idea. There is a precedent for this action; section officers get travel money directly from the MAA. It was requested that the executive committee put their idea in writing and put it to a vote of the membership along with the election of officers. It was also recommended that pros and cons be listed.

The members unanimously congratulated Allan Rossman, as a well-respected statistics educator, for winning the National Teaching Award.

Milo Schield, from SIGMAA QL, informed us that MAA sent out a survey to institution representatives about the state of quantitative literacy. The survey contained some questions about statistics courses. Perhaps we would be interested in constructing a more targeted survey to assess the state of statistics.

Door Prizes were awarded!!!

Meeting adjourned.