Numbers as Story Tellers

1
Numbers as Story Tellers

• Why do we need them?
• Can we trust them?
• How do we get to know them well?

http//www.fno.org/oct04/numeracy.ppt.htm
2
Whats the story here?
3
Whats the story here?

• 1969
• 1976
• 1925
• 1922
• 1937
• 1973
• 1933
• 1948
• 1944
• 1904
• 1981
• 1872
• 1918
• 1860
• 1960
• 1876
• 1980
• 1967

• Founding Dates of NZ Wineries
• 1975
• 1980
• 1973
• 1974
• 1943
• 1902
• 1947
• 1942
• 1937
• 1983
• 1934
• 1936
• 1935
• 1902
• 1937
• 1961
• 1979

4
Do Numbers Ever Lie?

• Life is getting better!

5
Maths vs. Numeracy

• The doing
• Memorized patterns
• Cooking by recipe
• ------ vs. -------
• Figuring stuff out
• Solving unusual problems
• The bigger picture of literacies and
  understanding
• Cooking for real
• Weaving webs of meaning

6
Numbers What are they good for?

• Counting
• Describing
• Measuring
• Mixing
• Building
• Cooking
• Planning
• Predicting
• Accounting
• Selling
• Understanding

• Digging to China?
• Finding the difficult truth?
• Telling stories

7
Why bother?

• Consumer issues
• Citizenship issues
• Employment issues
• Invention and discovery issues
• Others?

8
Home-Made Collections

• Pets
• Patterns of behavior
• Interviews
• Experiments
• Observations

9
BOM

• What can we do with all those numbers?

10
What are the Questions?

• The BOM provides lessons that might prove useful.

11
Serial Questioners
12
Exploring vs. Describing

• Whats going on?
• Whats the story?
• What is really happening?

13
Figuring Out vs. Describing

• Why do you suppose?

14
Predicting vs. Describing

• What are the chances that X will happen?

15
Critiquing vs. Accepting
Life is getting better!

• Challenging
• Debunking
• Wondering
• Analyzing

16
Number Stories
17
Numeracy in the News

• http//ink.news.com.au/mercury/mathguys/mercury.ht
  m

18
Chance and Data from MANSW

• http//hsc.csu.edu.au/pta/mansw/chance.htm

19
EDNA Theme Page

• http//www.edna.edu.au/edna/page456.html

20
Crunching NumbersExploring the World with Data

• http//fnopress.com/CRUNCH.htm