Presenter(s):  Joachim Engel and Laura Martignon, Ludwigsburg University of Education, Germany   

The webinar presents and discusses educational materials that aim to (1) enable students (middle school, high school, college) to explore important data sets providing evidence of climate change and related phenomena such as rising temperatures and CO2 levels in the atmosphere, melting glaciers, (2) to empower students to evaluate risks related to issues of environmental policy as well as to individual life style choices (3) and to initiate reflections and discussions among students on how to regulate access to and use of common goods within a game-line scenario called Mazu.

All tools are based on CODAP and plug-ins designed by Tim Erickson.

Joachim Engel, I am professor emeritus of mathematics and mathematics education. I received a diploma in mathematics from the University of Bonn and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of Southern California. Early on, I was fascinated by the mathematics of uncertainty. Over the years my focus shifted from orthodox theory of probability and statistics towards bridging human understanding and sense making in situations of risk and uncertainty. Educating the public to better understand statistics about society is a burning issue where statistics education can make an important contribution to society. I have been coordinator of the ProCivicStat project that aims to empower people to engage in informed decision making and participate in evidence based public policy. After my formal retirement in 2020 I still continue to teach some courses and do editorial work, with a focus on enhancing the public’s understanding of statistics in the areas of health, environment and democratic values.

Laura Martignon obtained a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in mathematics at Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotà and a doctorate at the University of Tübingen. Since 2003, she has worked as Professor of Mathematics and Mathematical Education at the Ludwigsburg University of Education. She was one of the founding members of the ABC Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition, directed by Gerd Gigerenzer. Her main academic contributions have been in probabilistic reasoning and decision-making. She is best known for having conceptualized and defined fast-and-frugal trees for classification and decision-making, proving their fundamental properties, and creating a theoretical bridge from natural frequencies to fast-and-frugal heuristics for classification and decision-making.