While their peers enjoy Spring Break, class is in session for 20 students from New Haven’s Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School (Co-op). The school’s statistics class is spending part of their April vacation this week at the Yale School of Public Health for a special review of the advanced placement statistics exam.
The Yale Center for Analytic Sciences (YCAS) is sponsoring the program. YCAS has run an intensive two-week statistical boot camp for high school students for the last three summers, in which the students learn about the R programming language, the field of biostatistics and career opportunities.
The review is an outgrowth of the partnerships with local New Haven area high schools that have grown from the summer program. Breanna Wajnowski, the Co-op’s statistics teacher, says “This gives me an extra eight hours to review the mock exam before they face the real thing. I’m a new stats teacher and Don Brechlin [a teacher from Amity High School and a Young Scholars advisor] was incredibly helpful in helping me decide how to structure these sessions. As a teacher, this is a luxury. You just don't get this kind of time for focused review. And all we have to do is give up some of our break.”
“I think it is great that these kids and their teacher are giving up part of their spring break to come to Yale to study statistics,” says YCAS executive director Casey King.
YCAS is a center for collaborative science. Developed in partnership with Yale Center for Clinical Investigation and the Yale School of Public Health, it brings together existing academic strengths in biostatistics, epidemiology, health economics, health policy, health services and big data research. Its collaborative teams provide expertise in the design, conduct and analysis of health and health care studies, methodological development and education and training.