Blog Archives
Half a million views – so who are you all?
Another busy week at BIS, and a great Unity in Diversity Day!
This site just passed the 500,000 views mark, which is not something I expected when I started it as an experiment in blogging, ‘Science Teachers’ Video Resources,‘ a few summers ago. It’s morphed into a resource-bank for IB Biology and Science in general, and grows as I find more and more great links for learning about the scientific world.
The resources posted here are first and foremost for my own students – to help them go deeper into Biology and to open the door to the trans-disciplinary realms of Science. It’s great that it has become a useful tool for other students and teachers, and I hope that this is a sign that the resources here are useful. It is great to receive emails and comments from people using the site – especially when they spot a mistake and then I can get it fixed!
I don’t really know who is using this site beyond my students, so please leave a comment below to let me know who you are and what you do here. Even better – tag yourself or your school on this map!
Thank-you for your support!
Stephen
PS – because this is a video site and the post is about statistics, here is my TED Talk hero, Hans Rosling, spreading his good news of the decade:
Now go the the best website ever: GapMinder!
Information Is Beautiful at TEDGlobal 2010
Linked to some of the other posts about data visualisations, here is Information is Beautiful creator David McCandless at TED Global 2010.
“Data is the new (s)oil”
Visualisation is a great tool for highlighting trends and patterns in data sets, but we must still learn to go into the data ourselves. We must use a critical eye when looking at these graphics – what do they intend to communicate and how well do they achieve their goal?
Ben Goldacre: Bad Science Interview
Dr. Ben Goldacre is the author of the excellent Bad Science blog and column in the Guardian newspaper. His new book, BadScience, is out now and in it he explains how (with many, many examples), Science is misrepresented in the media and how some ‘quack’ disciplines present unscientific data as fact.
NewScientist has a review of his book here, and there is a short interview with Ben on their channel:
He has helped produce some teaching materials for schools, which are available here.
Top posts for IB Bio students to read:
2. The Media’s MMR Hoax (Wakefield trial, autism and vaccines non-link)
3. The Man Behind the Mop of Death (false-positive MRSA results from a garden-shed phony)
4. The Huff (statistics)
5. Anything to do with dodgy fish-oil trials, quack homeopaths (especially evil AIDS-denialists), BrainGym and nutritionists.
It’s all good.
i-Biology 