To identify clicker questions likely to provoke rich and engaging student discussions, we recorded the percentage of the class voting on each option on every clicker question used throughout each semester, encompassing nineteen sections of introductory statistics, taught by three instructors. Working from the hypothesis that seeing student votes…

This article presents a project that is meant to deepen student understanding of what it would mean for one preference voting method to be "better" than another. In the project we show the students how to rigorously compare the methods of plurality and plurality with elimination, and we then allow them to compare two other voting methods…

Liberal arts mathematics courses can provide non-majors the opportunity to connect mathematical topics with areas of personal interest. This article describes two end-of-unit writing assignments (on voting and graph theory) that have been structured so that each student is able to synthesize course material in a unique way, while ensuring a…

Using technology to enhance the classroom environment can have a tremendous impact on student learning, as well as on an instructor's teaching. This paper describes one instructor's transition from traditional chalkboard lectures to a fully technological presentation of content. After carefully reviewing the literature, clicker technology was…

We describe a non-statistics, data-based activity developed by the author for an interdisciplinary course on mathematics and politics that uses actual ballot data from the City of San Francisco, California. The assignment is appropriate for a general education audience and develops students' ability to work with data, improves their understanding…

I present a unit on voting theory and social choice taught as the beginning of a liberal arts mathematics course for undergraduates. In this unit, students voted on the final grade calculation formula and topics to cover during the semester and then analyzed the results using various voting systems. I believe that by allowing my students to…

One technique for identifying and addressing common student errors is the method of classroom voting, in which the instructor presents a multiple-choice question to the class, and after a few minutes for consideration and small group discussion, each student votes on the correct answer, often using a hand-held electronic clicker. If a large number…

Clickers and classroom voting are used across a number of disciplines in a variety of institutions. There are several papers that describe the use of clickers in mathematics classrooms such as precalculus, calculus, statistics, and even differential equations. This paper describes a method of incorporating clickers and classroom voting in a…