Peter Holmes Prize Announcement 2025

The paper entitled “A simple activity to introduce matched pairs and learning effect” by Allison Davidson, has won the Peter Holmes Prize for 2025. Recipients of this prize need to demonstrate excellence in motivating practical classroom activities. Activities that are clear, succinct, and ready to take from the shelf are exactly what busy statistics educators are looking for, when searching for activities to deliver in their classrooms. They also need to be engaging and easy to follow from a student perspective, with all the right ingredients listed and easy to source, to be used as part of the activity. This article ticks all these boxes, right off the page! And not only that, it presents opportunities for statistics educators to adapt the level of the activity, suited to their needs of their classroom level. The activity consists of students filling in two lines of circles, one using their dominant and the other using their nondominant hand. The difference in time to fill in the circles is compared. Completed within a 75-minute timeframe, the activity can also be undertaken with the aid of R, however low technology alternatives are also suggested, depending on the availability of resources. The GAISE College Report, as referred to in the article, recommends introducing statistical concepts using hands-on activities, taking advantage of physical data collection, and having students analyze their own data. In doing so, students may have a deeper understanding of where the data come from, how data were obtained, and can better interpret results in context. This article is an excellent representation of these recommendations, which should lay a foundation for understanding statistical concepts with added complexities and thought-provoking questions, introduced later in the students' studies. As well as providing supplementary worksheets, this article introduces key statistical concepts, including; data exploration by introducing students to common data displays such as dot plots, histograms and boxplots, data visualisation, statistical inference, setting up hypotheses, calculating a p-value or confidence intervals and stating conclusions in context. Clear examples of the results students might obtain from the activity are also presented, in the form of a series of dotplots, and side by side boxplots, which are accompanied by a series of explanations. This is to give the reader an idea of the potential reasons for the data presented. “This is an engaging paper that describes an activity that is accessible to any introductory statistics classroom, can be implemented in unplugged and technological environments, and is firmly grounded in the GAISE recommendations.” “Activities in which students generate and analyse their own data increase motivation resulting in students taking more ownership and being more engaged. The activity has the potential to make fundamental ideas such as random assignment more concrete. I believe it will serve as a valuable resource for many statistics instructors.” The aim of this prize is to highlight excellence in motivating practical classroom activity. It is a fitting tribute to Peter Holmes who was a pioneer, leader, developer, evaluator, and tireless advocate over many decades for the teaching of statistical practice and thinking across school levels and disciplines. He also cogently argued for these at foundational and introductory levels post-school. His advocacy of data investigations in UK school curricula in the 1970's became the Plan, Collect, Process, Discuss (PCPD) description of the statistical data investigation process whose well-established role in statistical education pedagogy and practice is now being matched by similar advocacy in data science. Peter was Director of the Schools Council Project on Statistics Education at the University of Sheffield from 1975–1980. In 1978 the Teaching Statistics Trust was established, with Peter one of the first trustees, and the first editor of Teaching Statistics established by the Trust. Peter became the inaugural Director of the Centre for Statistical Education set up in 1983 jointly by University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University, co-chaired by Vic Barnett and Warren Gilchrist. In 1995 when this became the RSSCSE (Royal Statistical Society Centre for Statistical Education) and moved first to Nottingham University and then, in 1999, to Nottingham Trent University, Peter continued his work with the Centre, contributing to resources, reports and dedication to every aspect of good practice in teaching statistics. He was truly inspirational in everything he did. We are pleased to honour Peter Holmes' lifetime of achievements in teaching statistics through this prize.