Six degrees of separation

Six degrees of separation

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Six degrees of separation

Clip from How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer | ABC | August 8, 2010

Mathematics

Classification: Parental Guidance

Duncan Watts reveals how the game and urban myth of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon helped shape his Small World Project and network theory.

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Duncan Watts reveals how the game and urban myth of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon helped shape his Small World Project and network theory.

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Managers have no clue what conditions actually motivate their workers best, as shown by research conducted by Teresa Amabile, host of the original Against All Odds.

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Comparing the activity and calorie expenditure levels of Western office workers and African hunter-gatherers adds some surprising new data to the science of obesity.

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Against All Odds: Inside Statistics: Small Sample Inference For One Mean

Years 7-8, 9-10 Mathematics

A brewer uses this technique to monitor quality differences in multiple batches of the same beer.

Is a newly discovered poem really written by William Shakespeare? Using statistical analysis of his known word use, researchers set up null and alternative hypotheses to investigate.

Against All Odds: Inside Statistics: Tests of Significance

Years 7-8, 9-10 Mathematics

Is a newly discovered poem really written by William Shakespeare? Using statistical analysis of his known word use, researchers set up null and alternative hypotheses to investigate.

A battery manufacturer tests just a sample of its product to verify its claims about battery life. A margin of error and a confidence level help quantify its accuracy.

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Years 7-8, 9-10 Mathematics

A battery manufacturer tests just a sample of its product to verify its claims about battery life. A margin of error and a confidence level help quantify its accuracy.

This quality control method helped Quest Diagnostics streamline and improve their system for processing and testing lab samples so they could meet their nightly deadlines.

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Years 7-8, 9-10 Mathematics

This quality control method helped Quest Diagnostics streamline and improve their system for processing and testing lab samples so they could meet their nightly deadlines.

Heights of third graders in one class. Quality scores for circuit boards at a factory. Taking multiple samples allows us to visualise the sampling distribution of the sample mean.

Against All Odds: Inside Statistics: Sampling Distributions

Years 7-8, 9-10 Mathematics

Heights of third graders in one class. Quality scores for circuit boards at a factory. Taking multiple samples allows us to visualise the sampling distribution of the sample mean.

Sickle cell disease is an example of binomial distribution in families with two parents who are carriers for this genetic trait.

Against All Odds: Inside Statistics: Binomial Distributions

Years 7-8, 9-10 Mathematics

Sickle cell disease is an example of binomial distribution in families with two parents who are carriers for this genetic trait.

The US counts every resident every 10 years, or at least tries to. Statisticians use sampling from a population as an alternative to a complete count, as utilised at a potato chip factory.

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Years 7-8, 9-10 Mathematics

The US counts every resident every 10 years, or at least tries to. Statisticians use sampling from a population as an alternative to a complete count, as utilised at a potato chip factory.

We move beyond observational studies, like the one of marine life in the remote Line Islands, to designing experiments that manipulate various subject groups, as in the case of a medical study about osteoarthritis treatments.

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Years 7-8, 9-10 Mathematics

We move beyond observational studies, like the one of marine life in the remote Line Islands, to designing experiments that manipulate various subject groups, as in the case of a medical study about osteoarthritis treatments.

This historical story describes how researchers untangled the relationship between smoking and lung cancer.

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Years 7-8, 9-10 Mathematics

This historical story describes how researchers untangled the relationship between smoking and lung cancer.

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Against All Odds: Inside Statistics: Two-Way Tables

Years 7-8, 9-10 Mathematics

One city surveyed the happiness of its residents. Two-way tables help organise the data and tease out relationships between happiness levels and opinions about aspects of the city itself.

Twin studies track how similar identical and fraternal twins are on various characteristics, even if they don't grow up together. Correlation lets researchers put a number on it.

Against All Odds: Inside Statistics: Correlation

Years 7-8, 9-10 Mathematics

Twin studies track how similar identical and fraternal twins are on various characteristics, even if they don't grow up together. Correlation lets researchers put a number on it.

Winter snowpack in the Colorado Rockies can predict spring water supply. Plotting annual measurements in a scatter plot lets resource managers draw a regression line that helps them forecast water availability.

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Winter snowpack in the Colorado Rockies can predict spring water supply. Plotting annual measurements in a scatter plot lets resource managers draw a regression line that helps them forecast water availability.

Plotting annual numbers of Florida powerboat registrations and manatee killings suggests an uncomfortable relationship for the marine mammals.

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Years 7-8, 9-10 Mathematics

Plotting annual numbers of Florida powerboat registrations and manatee killings suggests an uncomfortable relationship for the marine mammals.

Production at Pete and Gerry's Organic Eggs provides a number of distributions that look normal - but are they?

Against All Odds: Inside Statistics: Checking Assumption of Normality

Years 7-8, 9-10 Mathematics

Production at Pete and Gerry's Organic Eggs provides a number of distributions that look normal - but are they?

Numtums are ten cuddly creatures with numbers on their tummies, who love to count! Super Numtum flies in to do some super sleuthing and finds the number eight in the nick of time.

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Years F Numeracy, Mathematics

Numtums are ten cuddly creatures with numbers on their tummies, who love to count! Super Numtum flies in to do some super sleuthing and finds the number eight in the nick of time.

Numtums are ten cuddly creatures with numbers, who love to count. Inspired by Super Numtum, the Numpups decide they want to race, but first they need to make number signs for the race course.

Numtums: Painting By Numtums

Years F Numeracy, Mathematics

Numtums are ten cuddly creatures with numbers, who love to count. Inspired by Super Numtum, the Numpups decide they want to race, but first they need to make number signs for the race course.

Numtums are ten cuddly creatures with numbers, who love to count. Sandy shows the other Numtums that different shapes can be bigger or smaller but still contain the same number.

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Years F Numeracy, Mathematics

Numtums are ten cuddly creatures with numbers, who love to count. Sandy shows the other Numtums that different shapes can be bigger or smaller but still contain the same number.

Visit the Boston Beanstalks club for tall people. Height is normally distributed and we can use membership cut-offs and population data to calculate Z-scores.

Against All Odds: Inside Statistics: Normal Calculations

Years 7-8, 9-10 Mathematics

Visit the Boston Beanstalks club for tall people. Height is normally distributed and we can use membership cut-offs and population data to calculate Z-scores.

A nature preserve that's tracked bird migrations through New England for decades records tons of bird-related data; everything from wingspan measurements to arrival dates provides examples of normal distributions.

Against All Odds: Inside Statistics: Normal Curves

Years 7-8, 9-10 Mathematics

A nature preserve that's tracked bird migrations through New England for decades records tons of bird-related data; everything from wingspan measurements to arrival dates provides examples of normal distributions.

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Years F, 1-2 Languages, Mathematics

Sally is sorting plant pots from the garden. She asks Possum to help but Possum ends up sorting the pots by colour instead of size. They head inside so Sally can teach Possum to sort things by colour, size and shape.

How can we compare sales at two franchises in the Wahoo's restaurant chain? Standard deviation helps us quantify the variability in sales.

Against All Odds: Inside Statistics: Standard Deviation

Years 7-8, 9-10 Mathematics

How can we compare sales at two franchises in the Wahoo's restaurant chain? Standard deviation helps us quantify the variability in sales.

Using the example of hot dog calorie counts, we use boxplots to visualise the five-number summary and make comparisons between different types of frankfurters.

Against All Odds: Inside Statistics: Boxplots

Years 7-8, 9-10 Mathematics

Using the example of hot dog calorie counts, we use boxplots to visualise the five-number summary and make comparisons between different types of frankfurters.

Numtums are 10 cuddly creatures with numbers, who love to count. Nimbin has a dream about the number three, while Fluffy McTuffy plans to bounce Super Numtum into space.

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Years F, 1-2 Numeracy, Mathematics

Numtums are 10 cuddly creatures with numbers, who love to count. Nimbin has a dream about the number three, while Fluffy McTuffy plans to bounce Super Numtum into space.

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