A project involving data related to socioeconomic indicators was administered in an introductory statistics course. As part of this project, student groups investigated a data set from the United States Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service website with information on recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)…

Though posters have been used as a pedagogical tool in a variety of fields, the literature suggests that the use of posters as an educational assessment tool by the mathematics community has been limited. This is unfortunate given the numerous potential benefits of a poster, including the development of oral communication skills and the ability to…

This curated collection covers a selection of PRIMUS articles published over a roughly 12-year period that focus on modeling and applications. The collection includes sections on individual projects, courses with a significant modeling component, and modeling and applications in extracurricular settings and throughout the curriculum.

This article describes five elementary statistics projects involving the COVID-19 data made available to the public in csv files by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The first project examined data available at the beginning of the COVID surge in New York City in spring, 2020, and used the correlation coefficient to estimate the…

Transforming an observable phenomenon into a tractable model is a challenging process, from determining the appropriate modeling scale to making realistic simplifying assumptions. However, many modeling texts are anchored around problems that have already been synthesized into a digestible format, which inhibits an opportunity to engage students…

We describe teaching an introductory discrete mathematics course entirely from student projects based on primary historical sources. We present case studies of four projects that cover the content of a one-semester course, and mention various other courses that we have taught with primary source projects.

Facebook provides businesses and organizations with copious data that describe how users are interacting with their page. This data affords an excellent opportunity to turn introductory statistics students into consultants to analyze the Facebook data using descriptive and inferential statistics. This paper details a semester-long project that…

We describe a semester-long project for an introductory statistics class that studies the broken windows theory of policing and the related issues of race, policing, and criminal justice. The most impactful feature of the project is the data-collection phase, in which students attend and observe a public arraignment court session. This "Court…

We present several modules that address social justice issues in an introductory statistics course. The activities consider possible disparities of housing location, language spoken at home, and job sector as they relate to, respectively, access to healthy foods, air pollution via proximity to traffic, and health concerns via proximity to fracking…

I have included a service-learning project in my mathematical modeling course for the last 6 years. This article describes my experience with service-learning in this course. The article includes a description of the course and the service-learning projects. There is a discussion of how to connect with community partners and identify…

We describe a course that highlights mathematical experimentation as an introductory course for first year mathematics majors. We discuss the benefits of an experimental approach as an alternate pathway into the mathematics major. We also explain how this course serves as a gentle lead-in to later research experiences.

The inverted classroom allows more in-class time for inquiry-based learning and for working through more advanced problem-solving activities than does the traditional lecture class. The skills acquired in this learning environment offer benefits far beyond the statistics classroom. This paper discusses four ways that can make the inverted…

The Mat-Rix-Toe project utilizes a matrix-based game to deepen students' understanding of linear algebra concepts and strengthen students' ability to express themselves mathematically. The project was administered in three classes using slightly different approaches, each of which included some editing component to encourage the…