Jasper Woodbury Statistics and Business Plans Series engages grades 5–8 students in interactive video adventures that teach statistical reasoning and business planning through real-world challenges. Featuring pilot Jasper Woodbury, these three ~15-minute episodes focus on sampling, probability, and financial analysis, fostering data literacy, decision-making, and critical thinking. Aligned with Common Core standards, the series includes teacher guides and student worksheets for teacher-led debriefs and extension activities for classroom integration. Key episode highlights include:
- The Big Splash: Students survey community preferences to evaluate business ideas like a water park, applying basic probability and data collection to assess profitability and risks, introducing statistical survey methods.
- Bridging the Gap: Students use sampling techniques to select and prioritize community projects (e.g., bridge building), analyzing survey data to make data-driven decisions on resource allocation, enhancing sampling and inference skills.
- A Capital Idea: Students develop a business plan by sampling customer data to optimize expenses, revenue projections, and marketing strategies, using probability to evaluate financial scenarios, building advanced business acumen.
Each episode includes three CD-ROMs (story disc, teacher disc, teacher manual disc) with integrated video content (no videotape or DVD included, despite a teacher manual misprint). Available for PCs running Microsoft Windows; Mac OS X is not supported. View the Episode Comparison document below for detailed information on each episode. This series equips educators with engaging tools to build students’ statistical proficiency and business acumen in middle school math curricula.