Statistics students collect data, present findings on famous statisticians

HVCC Statistics students were hard at work the week before the holiday break on a project that required no numerical calculations. High school math teacher Camelia Sofrone’s students collected data on the most influential statisticians in history and then presented their findings to classmates.

picture of student standing in front of class with presenting a Powerpoint on his statistics research — HVCC Statistics student Kyle Parker presents his research project on 19th century statistician Karl Pearson.

For his project, Kyle Parker researched Karl Pearson who introduced the concept of Standard Deviation in 1893, and is widely credited as being the leading founder of the modern field of statistics. Kyle and his classmates in the college-credit-bearing course are quite familiar with the formula for calculating standard deviation, a number used to tell how measurements for a group are spread out from the average (mean), or expected value.

The assignment also required that students research their statistician’s contributions to society. Kyle learned that Pearson’s work left a significant impact on not only mathematics, but also on such sciences as biology, psychology, anthropology, medicine and sociology.