Numeracy Centre receives accolades at a Conference in Berlin

Dr Sheena Rughubar-Reddy, a Numeracy Centre lecturer, returned from a conference in Berlin in July where the Numeracy Centre was praised by one of the organisers, Professor Iddo Gal.  Prof Gal is an international expert on statistical literacy and who visited the Numeracy Centre a couple of years ago. Sheena was the only delegate invited from Africa at this international conference, the International Association for Statistical Education Roundtable which was hosted by the Max-Plank Institute for Human Development. Its theme was Promoting understanding of Statistics about Society. Her talk was entitled “Quantitative Literacy Intervention in the Faculty of Health Sciences at University of Cape Town” and she reported that there was an interested audience who gave her useful feedback. At the conference Sheena also attended several stimulating workshops on teaching statistics and is keen to implement some of the new ideas she heard about there.

Sheena was assisted to attend the conference by Prof Gal who organised finances for her from the World Bank so that she could talk about research done in one of the courses that the Numeracy Centre provides for Health Science students, which introduces them to quantitative reasoning demands of their studies in higher education and their profession. Prof Gal clearly has a high regard for the work done by the Numeracy Centre. In fact, whenever he introduced Sheena to colleagues, he made a point of saying how unique he thought the UCT Numeracy Centre was, saying that he thought there was “the only unit of its kind in the world”.