Topical application of Mathematics and Statistics (TAMAS)
There are many uses of mathematics and statistics that underpin news stories and articles.
Sometimes the stories are based on data from questionnaires and sometimes on hypothesis with supporting data. Often the news stories are based on a dubious use of statistics, with for example a small sample size, or one not stratified or with no indication of the analysis at all. Mathematical models are also used extensively in engineering and scientific contexts as well as providing relevant comparative information in sporting contexts (for example, in ranking participants or countries) but again the underlying model is often not given at all but the results are presented as as a truth rather than a consequence of the mathematical model that has been used.
Here we will take news articles on a monthly (and sometimes weekly) basis to provide lesson plans that are focused on news stories that have a mathematical or statistical underpinning. These lessons will be developed for a particular age range (based on Key Stages 3, 4 and 5) with suggestions for related activities, sometimes to find out the information on which the story was based, sometimes to critic the method or model used and sometime to provide further insight into the news story.
In summary, we aim to provide teachers and their learners with interesting and relevant activities that bring a real world context into mathematics teaching, illustrating that mathematics (and statistics) is an important and relevant subject for further study.