Statistic Olympics Teaches Students About Math

Creativity and math don’t always go hand in hand. But that was not the case recently at Marco Island Academy. New math teacher, Zach Wolfe, is teaching his statistic students with creative ideas. His Statistics Olympics was a big hit for students and school officials alike.

“We’ve been studying one variable data,” Wolfe said of his statistics class, "creating different charts, bar graphs and pie charts. We’ve also looked at the normal distribution so far. I just wanted a way for the kids to apply all that to a project-based learning activity.”

The students created eight different events for their Olympics event.

"The students came up with everything,” Wolfe said proudly. "All original ideas. We encouraged them to be as original as possible. We had hole pong, chubby bunny - which was seeing how many marshmallows you could stuff in your mouth saying chubby bunny. We had water bottle flip. We had an activity when students blew up a balloon and tried to see how many cups they could carry. We had rubber band archery, trash basketball, and a stats car race. How many ping pong balls you could bounce on your paddle in 30 seconds.”

Each group was tasked with creating a 30-second to one-minute game. 

"During the game,” Wolfe said, "students collected quantitative data, like numbers, on things like how fast their car traveled or how many marshmallows people were able to stuff in their mouths, or they were scored on the ping pong activity.”

After the Statistics Olympics activity the students analyzed the data, both quantitatively as by applying Z scores and other techniques learned in their class's first two modules.

"I’m just really a fan of allowing students to show mastery of a subject in more ways than just the traditional way of paper and pencil,” Wolfe said. "Applying it to real life. I was really impressed with the diversity of the events. How well the kids did with the whole process of creation, analyzing the data, taking it and presenting it to the class. That was really cool to see." 

Wolfe said that since statistics is a non-tested subject, he can be more creative as a teacher. 

"We can take time for more project based learning projects,” Wolfe said. "We don’t have to prepare them for a standardized test, which helps too. They can really get to know the information differently."

Several school leaders took part in Wolfe’s Statistics Olympics, including Jane Watt, the school’s founder and board president, board treasurer Jim Miller, school principal Melissa Scott, and assistant principal Vanessa Koch.

“They actually came up and participated in the project,” Wolfe said enthusiastically. "It seemed like they had a really good time. They loved the students’ creativity. That was really cool.”

“The Statistics Olympics was a perfect example of creative, project based learning,” Jane Watt said. “Students were fully engaged as they collected statistical data. Plus everyone had a great time.”