Hypothetical in Teaching by Frank

Hypothetical in Teaching by Frank - August 2017 Scholarship Essay

All throughout my years in school, I found myself heavily interested in mathematics and science. This interest and my good memory allowed me to succeed fairly well in my math classes, to the point where my fellow classmates would look to me for help and tutoring when they found it necessary. I would help as often as I could, sometimes with mixed results. I enjoyed any extra practice I could get with my favorite subjects and the joy earned from successfully helping another understand what they wanted to know. As such, I have often thought I would not mind becoming a statistics teacher. Statistics was one of my favorite subjects; I would enjoy the hypothetical situations given to us to test and verify. It was also a perfect blend of science and math that I enjoyed applying to real life and my own hypothetical situations. The added bonus of being able to teach people how to be wary of intentional data manipulation in this day and age is a thought that I had always found to be humorous.

Statistics was very enjoyable to me. Even as a child I loved playing around with probability, finding out how likely something was to take place was an absolute wonder. The younger me would enjoy figuring out how dangerous a gamble was, as though the concept of probability were a psychic able to predict the future. Being able to further understand how probability worked and the amount of thought was placed in recreational activities involving probability reignited that youthful wonder in me and helped me keep motivated in reading the book as much as I could. Helping others with that same wonder would be an enjoyable experience and one I would look forward to if I were to become a teacher.

Between elections, opinion polls, censuses, scientific research, agriculture, medicine, and even daily life, the real life applications of statistics are numerous. Due to this, there are always new things to test or verify when it comes to statistics, keeping the subject more interesting and topical than most. When it comes to projects where students can make their own poll, test their own hypotheses, or disprove a recent study, they’ll feel more involved in the current events of the world. This involvement can be a great motivator for both the students and me.

A major benefit of the real life applications of statistics is how people can be made more aware of manipulated data and conclusions. Helping my students to not be manipulated easily by the media they are consuming seems like a fulfilling endeavor. In this day and age there are many headlines that are fake, exaggerated, or based on a manipulated or badly made conclusion. A statistics class can go a long way to help figure out the truth amongst all the falsehoods and make better decisions because of it. I would be honored to lead such attempts to expand one’s knowledge of the world.

Guiding the future of the world is an interesting concept to me. Helping them discover concepts that will help them avoid misinformation and bad decisions would be a great motivator. My natural ability lends itself well to mathematics. Were I looking into becoming a teacher, I would love to become a statistics teacher.