Monica Howlett

Honours student, School of Maths and Physics, University of Tasmania

Statistics are everywhere. They give information on how well your AFL team is going, the weather, how much money you should bet in poker…Most people automatically think “Statistics – how boring!”, but statistics can tell us so many interesting things about the world around us.

 

At the moment I’m investigating the subject score scaling in Tasmanian Grade 11 and 12 pre-tertiary subjects. There are so many different subjects to choose from – everything from Chemistry to Dance to Legal Studies! It seems sensible that subjects should be scaled, so each is worth a different number of points. This adjusts for some subjects being harder than others.

 

I’ve always been interested in scientific type subjects. I undertook a Science degree at the University of Tasmania, and studied Geology, Geography and Chemistry, as well as Maths. I continued further with Maths, and am currently completing Honours in Statistics. I chose to go on with statistics, because I find it enjoyable and I can apply it to so many interesting areas!