Professor Delia North’s passion is statistics and she revels in spreading news about the value of the discipline through community outreach programmes aimed at disadvantaged high school youngsters as well as their teachers!
North has had a life-long love affair with the subject which has dominated her involvement with the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) over a multitude of years.
In 1977 she registered at the University for a BSc degree with majors in Mathematical Statistics and Mathematics, going onto complete all her degrees at UKZN, including a doctorate in Advanced Probability Theory in 1992. Today she is Dean and Head of the Institution’s School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science – still as passionate about statistics as she was in her student days with the added impetus of getting learners interested in the subject from a relatively young age.
“I was a strong mathematics student at school, finding statistics by accident – something I have been forever grateful for as the job opportunities and versatility of a degree in the subject are enormous,” said North.
“I got involved with statistics capacity building as I found over the years that many people arrive at university without a correct understanding of the discipline mainly because it is not termed ‘statistics’ in schools and also forms only a small part of the maths curriculum.
“Even today, in the 4th Industrial Revolution, where there is such a demand for data scientists who can combine different fields of work in statistics and computation for the purpose of decision-making, there is still confusion about what statistics involves,” she said.
North found that the key to overcoming some of the ignorance about statistics was to organise fun workshops for youngsters and training workshops for teachers, particularly those at disadvantaged schools, to get the message out and into classrooms.
She has done just that for over 20 years, using her vast knowledge and network of international statistics education research contacts. She assisted the Department of Basic Education’s mathematics work group to define the Data Handling and Probability Curriculum (OBE new area, 2005) using her in depth background in the training of teachers in South Africa.
“Also as Chairperson of the Education Committee of South African Statistical Association for 17 years, I worked closely with the Statistics General to build capacity among teachers so they could meaningfully engage with statistics topics in the school curriculum,” said North.
In 2009, she was appointed “master trainer” of a Stats SA-sponsored project to train teachers titled maths4stats and met data analytics fanatic Mr Scelo Bengu who devised the eThekwini Municipal Maths & Science Olympiad (EMMSO) – aimed primarily at disadvantaged schools.
Last year, Bengbu asked North to assist in training teachers and learners for EMMSO and she not only got involved but sponsored gifts for all the participants.
A total of 18O leaners and 30 teachers from schools in township areas took park in round one of the competition in March and after the event, North held an on-campus workshop for the participating teachers with UKZN Statistics staff acting as trainers and mentors. The teachers learned how to download data from the StatsSA website to enable them to complete the second round of training which was to do posters on their communities and municipalities.
The second and third rounds were unfortunately scuppered by the COVID-19 pandemic and the project is on hold.
North, who started the statistics capacity building drive many years ago, says she has always encouraged staff at the discipline to join her in projects which have promoted team building.
“We have had such fun getting involved in projects with teachers and schoolchildren. We started a brand here at UKZN and want to be recognised as capacity builders of very proficient data analysts from school level all the way through to PhD!”
– Greg Dardagan