Simulation as a tool to make sense of the world

Abstract

An educational goal should be to prepare all students, not just those mathematically disposed, to make sound statistical inferences in different contexts. Students should be able to make decisions in the presence of uncertainty and to interpret quantitative information presented to them in the course of their professional and personal lives. This paper highlights terms such as herd immunity or efficacy that have emerged in the popular media since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and connects them to activities involving statistics and mathematics. Examples illustrate how simulation can be a vehicle for developing understanding of statistical concepts related to the pandemic and how simulation can engage students in reasoning from data to make sense of the world in which we live.