#STATSCENTER DRIVER#
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With its support and seed funding, we began to recruit onscreen talent and start production of the series.

I reached out to The Michelson Twenty Million Minds, an educationally minded foundation that works to improve access and affordability to higher education, where I had interned working on openly licensed learning materials for underserved populations. I always felt that helping someone realize that could be a powerful vehicle for inspiring a wider interest in those particular concepts, and possibly even make them more engaged and successful math students. Whether we know it or not, we speak in these terms when debating with our friends, predicting outcomes for games and rating our favorite players. I’m talking about everything from averages and normal distributions to best-fit lines and standard deviations.

#STATSCENTER SERIES#

We really wanted to have the series born from a love of sports and designed for the sports-lover to show them that so many of these ideas and concepts were already part of their everyday vernacular. This would not simply be a standard statistics course with sports examples bolted on as an afterthought.

#STATSCENTER DRIVER#

This was a very natural starting point because I’ve always seen statistics as the most critical mathematical tool - it can be a powerful driver that informs and shapes the decisions we make in every aspect of our lives. The phrase “collateral learning” has always stuck with me - the notion that learning material should be designed to be so engaging that actual learning is just a pleasant side effect.Ībout a year ago, I set out to produce a short video series that uses sports references, concepts and examples to carry a student through the key ideas in a semester-long introductory high school statistics course. I realized, with the help of some sports-business mentors, that maybe I had a unique perspective that could really leverage my love for sports to bring something of value to the world.ĭuring the past several years of school, I have become fascinated by the rapidly evolving world of edutainment - the explosive movement in the educational world involving trends like gamification that promise to make segments of traditional education more engaging and more effective. Playing alongside so many such students helped me to think of an idea to use our shared love of sports to inspire a love of math. Many students have an aversion to the idea of mathematics. The problem is not simply that most students fail to master mathematical subjects, or even that they do not have a basic understanding of core concepts. Nowhere is this gap more noticeable than in mathematical subject areas. On the soccer field, I have played with teammates and competitors from all walks of life, and the reality for many is that the traditional educational pathways often fall short. They can help people to find new parts of themselves, to find new limits and new abilities. They have the power to connect people with ideas and passions, and even with new educational experiences, skills and paths in life. Sports can do more than simply connect people with one another. I have had the pleasure of learning this over a short lifetime as an avid player of soccer, the “beautiful game.” Yet, overwhelmingly, sports bring people together in powerful ways. Games and matches are played “against” and “versus,” and are about besting the other team or outdoing your opponent about the spirit of competition and rivalry. That idea is something of a paradox, as sports can be divisive. Like music or food, every culture and people find expression through sports. Sports are arguably one of humanity’s greatest connectors. In this essay for KWHS, Cohen introduces us to “StatsCenter,” his soon-to-launch video series to help teach statistics to high school students.

These experiences helped him to realize that an educational idea he had been developing could truly become successful.

This past summer, Cohen, a soccer player and long-time sports enthusiast, attended the Wharton Sports Business Academy and the Wharton Moneyball program, which gave him a chance to explore the business of sports and to dive into the world of sports analytics and statistics. Cohen is a high school junior at Brentwood School in Los Angeles, Calif. HCMG 0001: Introduction to Health Economics.STAT 0002: Introduction to Statistics and Data Science.STAT 0001: Introduction to Statistics and Data Science.FNCE 0002: Essentials of Personal Finance.FNCE 0001: Introduction to Financial Markets and the Global Economy.Cambridge, UK: Strategy and International Management.San Francisco, CA: Innovation and Startup Culture.Management & Technology Summer Institute.

Statscenter