Why a poster?
Taking part in this poster
competition encourages students to:
John Hooper Medal for Statistics
• work as a team
2016 Poster Competition
• investigate real questions using data
http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/newse
• use their calculation and graphical skills vents/documents/JHooperflyer2016.pdf
• in terpret statistical results
• develop skills in written communication interpretation and
communication of statistics or statistical information.
The Central Statistics Office collects, analyses and
publishes official statistics for Ireland. It produces statistics
on the economic and social conditions in the state. Its main
role is to provide statistics for the Government to help it to
make informed policy decisions for the benefit of citizens.
The CSO is also responsible for making sure that official
statistics produced by other bodies such as government
departments and the central bank meet the national and
international standards applied to official statistics. The CSO
has a responsibility to publicise and promote the use of
official statistics. All releases are published to www.cso.ie at
11.00am as well as being tweeted from @csoireland which
has almost 12,000 followers.
As part of its role in promoting awareness and use of official
statistics, the CSO is partners in a number of activities and
initiatives for students such as Census at School, the John
Hooper poster competition and APPS4Gaps which is an
app developing and building competition. We also use
Events like World Statistics Day which this year is on the
20th of October are also used to promote official statistics
and their broader use.
The winners of the 2015 John Hooper senior competition
recently won an international prize with their entry. At the
60th International Statistics Institute World Statistics
Congress 2015, Rachael Ni Dhonnachadha and Shannon Ni
Dhonnachadha two Irish maths students were judged the
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Rachel and Shannon 1st Prize 2015
National competition
Registration by teacher by January 29th, 2016 to [email protected].
Posters to be submitted by 12 noon 18th March, 2016 to
[email protected].
Posters will be judged by the national organising committee.
The winning national posters will be announced on 6th May 2016.
Winners (1st place) of the national competition will be awarded the CSO
John Hooper medal for statistical analysis. In addition the following prize
money will be awarded:
• 1st Place - €1,600 (of which €1,000 is awarded to the school and
€600 is awarded to the student team)
• 2nd Place - €1,000 (of which €650 is awarded to the school and €350
is awarded to the student team)
• 3rd Place - €600 (of which €400 is awarded to the school and €200
is awarded to the student team)
best in the world in a poster competition run by the
International Association of Statistical Education (IASE) in
collaboration with the International Statistical Literacy Project
(ISLP). The poster competition attracted over 8,145 entries
from across six continents, with strong competition coming
from countries including Japan, Russia, Korea, Mexico,
Australia, Kenya, India, many other EU member states and
South Africa. Rachael Ni Dhonnachadha and Shannon Ni
Dhonnachadha, from St. Vincent’s Secondary School,
Dundalk, were placed first in the world, in the senior
category, with their poster “Road to Rio - Protecting Our
Olympic Boxing Future”. The junior John Hooper
competition winners, Aoife Conroy, Jessica Barbulescu and
Lauren Murphy, from Loreto Secondary School in Balbriggan
did Ireland proud coming third place in the world, in the
junior category, of the same competition, with their poster
“The effects of meditation and positivity training on school
community members”
Details of the competitions and intitatives are
below. Participation in the John Hooper and
Apps4gaps can count towards the ‘personal skill’
challenge area of Gaisce – providing that the
participant meets the minimum time requirements
for their Award level. http://gaisce.ie/personal-skill/
CensusAtSchool Project
The Royal Statistical Society Centre for
Statistical Education (RSSCSE) started the
CensusAtSchool project in 2000 in conjunction with the National Statistics
Office in the UK. The project, originally a one-off, was linked to the UK
population census of 2001. It has now developed into a dynamic, ongoing
and exciting initiative running in a number of countries.
It aims to:
• Involve students in collecting data about themselves and improve
understanding of a data gathering process, its purpose and benefits to
society;
• Foster a positive attitude to statistics through using real data that is of
interest to students;
• Enhance the process of statistical enquiry across the curriculum;
• Encourage effective Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
teaching and learning, including the use of the Internet;
• Provide access to large and meaningful data sets;
• Make comparisons between the student responses in different countries.
Since 2000 several other countries have embraced the project with
necessary adjustments to reflect local culture and traditions. These countries
include; Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Canada and now, in 2009,
Ireland. The worldwide database, which contains well over a million
responses, can be sampled over the Internet for use in creating teaching
and learning materials. It enables teachers and pupils across the world to
enhance their data handling skills leading to improved statistical literacy and
Apps4Gaps is an
international
competition aimed at
encouraging young people to provide concepts and
create applications using freely available Open Data.
Here are some suggestions for open data sources:
National Open Data Portal http://data.gov.ie/
Central Statistics Office’s Application Programming
Interface (API): http://www.cso.ie/webserviceclient/
These apps can benefit society in areas such as
transport, housing, planning, education,
communications and health. The competition
process will encourage participants to:
• work as a team
• learn or increase their skills in computer science
• utilise the opportunities presented by Open Data
• be challenged in creating technologies such as
mobile apps
Definition of an App
An app is defined as any piece of software that
can be run on a mobile device (mobile app),
within a social platform (social app) or in a web
browser (web app).
Entry categori es
This international competition is open to teams of
two or three participants. Teachers/lecturers must
register student teams otherwise the assigned team
leader registers the team. There are two types of
entries. Teams may enter either a working app or a
concept entry: The results of last year’s competition
can be viewed here:
www.cso.ie/en/newsandevents/apps4gaps2015co
mpetitionresults/
Datasets
Entrants must use at least one of the required Open
Datasets from http://data.gov.ie/
thinking. The involvement of different countries vastly
increases the potential for exchange of information
between school-aged children and is a unique way to
assess global, social and other changes. It has the
added bonus of providing ICT opportunities, and is
motivational for both teachers and children alike.
The website at www.censusatschool.com provides
access to all resources and each country’s own
CensusAtSchool website. Do take a look and get
involved. The project is totally free to all Irish Schools
and offers a unique and different experience for your
pupils. Ireland became involved in CensusAtSchool in
2009 when the NCCA, the CSO and the NCTE
collaborated to set-up the Irish website,
www.censusatschool.ie.
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