Statistics competition goes national

Statistics and school census results will come together in a colourful array when the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) statistics poster competition goes national.

USQ Competition Coordinator and Senior Lecturer in Mathematics, Dr Peter Dunn, said being a census year the University decided to link the annual competition to a Bureau of Statistics (ABS) initiative.

"USQ has an agreement this year with the ABS to run the competition in partnership with the ABS Census at Schools Project.

"The aim of the competition is to get school students involved in statistics, because they generally have very little exposure to statistics in schools and the exposure they do have is usually fairly dry.

"It's important to get students using statistics in a fun way and generate interest in pursuing careers in the industry - statistics is a discipline where there are a lot of jobs available, with more flagged in the future.

"Students can gather their own data and do their own experiments and this year the competition enables students to use the Census at Schools data for their posters, however they are not limited by it."

The Census at Schools Project involves a website where students in schools across Australia can enter their ‘census data', for example what pets they have.

The information is then stored anonymously in a database which can later be used to extract statistics, such as what percent of students have a pet dog.

The poster competition has grown annually since it started in 2003.

The competition started on the Darling Downs, before expanding to include Queensland and then Western Australia in 2005.

This year the national competition has been expanded to include Primary students and Years 10 and 11, as well as the traditional category for Years 8 and 9.

Given the enormity of the competition, USQ has also enlisted the help of a university from each state to help run the event. USQ will still coordinate the competition and website and judge the posters.

There will be a national prize for each category and first and second prizes for each state and territory. For further details on prizes and competition details visit: www.usq.edu.au/statscomp

Fiona Taylor, +61 7 4631 2559 or +61 423 808 462 or taylorf@usq.edu.au