Given her expertise in the arena of probability, it should come as no surprise that Joy Jordan, associate professor of statistics, has only purchased a lottery ticket once in her life, and that was on a whim for a $360 million jackpot. Her scholarship focuses on methods of teaching and learning statistics and carefully assessing those methods. She employs creative writing assignments to assist students grappling with statistical concepts and, inspired by musician Eminem in the movie Eight Mile, performs an end-of-term statistics “rap” to provide a musical review of concepts covered during the term.
A member of the faculty since 1999, Jordan co-wrote, with Associate Professor of Psychology Beth Haines, the article “The Role of Statistics Educators in the Quantitative Literacy Movement” for the Journal of Statistics Education. Among other things, the article addresses the difficulty students encounter when transferring knowledge from one disciplinary context to another.
Jordan was presented the 2006 Waller Education Award by the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistical Education, the first professor from a liberal arts college to receive the award.
In July, she delivered the address “A (Non-Random) Sample of Topics in Statistics Education” at the Conference on Teaching Introductory Statistics at the Medical College of Wisconsin, and in August she participated in the panel “Learning from and Applying Statistics Education Research to Our Own Teaching” at the Joint Statistical Meetings in Seattle.
A native of Mount Vernon, Iowa, and a former standout prep volleyball player, Jordan was inducted into the Iowa High School Athletic Hall of Fame in November.
The Photo: Mathematics majors Danielle Jordan ’07, left, and Stephanie Kliethermes ’07, right, are doing an independent study on multivariate statistical analysis with Professor Jordan.
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