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Minister Sherlock presents Awards to Winners of John Hooper Medal for Statistics
The Minister for Research and Innovation, Seán Sherlock T.D., in conjunction with Gerry O’Hanlon, Director General of the Central Statistics Office, presented prizes to the winners of the John Hooper Medal for Statistics at an awards ceremony in the Department of Education and Skills today.
Minister Sherlock also encouraged students to get involved in the 2011/2012 competition which he launched today.
Speaking at the awards, the Minister said that "Statistics lie at the heart of the type of quantitative reasoning necessary for making important advances in the sciences, such as medicine and genetics, and for making important decisions in business and public policy, and indeed in our daily lives.
"The study of Statistics is not just an essential part of one’s formal mathematical education but is an important part of what it means to be numerate."
The Minister said that these skills have all been ably demonstrated by the winning teams who received their awards at the presentation today.
Statistics is a challenging and rewarding branch of mathematics and is included as one of the strands in the new Project Maths syllabuses for both Junior and Leaving Certificate.
The John Hooper Medal for Statistics is for post-primary students (in Transition Year or Senior Cycle) who design a poster, to describe an aspect of their environment, with the help of statistics.
256 student groups in total registered for the competition from the whole island of Ireland. 101 posters, both Irish and English language entries, were received by the CSO.