Carleton College is hosting an ACM sponsored workshop on Friday, September 30 and Saturday, October 1 on "Strengthening Quantitative Reasoning: From Campus Conversations to Effective Curricular Reforms" to which two faculty and/or administrators from each of the ACM Colleges are invited to attend. Each ACM College has agreed to sponsor up to two faculty (that means cover travel expenses) to conferences such as this.

The first of two featured speakers is Professor Joel Best, a sociologist from the University of Delaware, who is best known for his books "Damned Lies and Statistics" and "More Damned Lies and Statistics." Both books are easily accessible by anyone who can calculate an average and deal provocatively with how the media and special interest groups manipulate statistics. Our second featured speaker is Bill Segraves, Associate Dean of Yale College at Yale University. Dean Segraves was a major contributor to the 2003 Report on Yale College Education that contained strong recommendations linked to the importance of quantitative reasoning. He has just been at the heart of an extensive and high-stakes curricular discussion. Carleton is just finishing its first year of a FIPSE, Department of Education grant to support our new quantitative reasoning program, and we will have several people participating in the conference.

The purpose of the conference is to get faculty and administrators who are curricular leaders on our campuses together to talk about how to develop and sustain curricular reforms specifically linked to quantitative reasoning. Many of your campuses have quantitative reasoning programs; others are certainly weighing the merits of introducing an initiative. The conference will provide all of us with a chance to talk about what general principles underlie successful quantitative reasoning programs and why they are important.

The conference schedule is as follows:

Friday, September 30 - Severance Great Hall
5:00 p.m. Reception and Dinner with Joel Best talk, "Statistical Literacy: What's the Problem?"

Saturday, October 1 - Severance Great Hall
8:15 a.m. Breakfast
9:00 a.m. talk by Bill Segraves
10:00 a.m. break
10:15 a.m. breakout sessions for discussion (Great Hall, Sayles-Hill Lounge, Sevy Lounge)
11:45 a.m. reconvene over lunch
12:30 p.m. break out groups report back
1:00 p.m. wrap-up comments by Dean Scott Bierman

For those who are interested, Joel Best will be presenting a Convocation "Damned Lies and Statistics" on Friday, September 30, in the Skinner Memorial Chapel at Carleton College from 10:50 to noon.