Peter Holmes Prize
Posted on 4 February 2025
The article describes activities which illustrate clinical trial context and concepts including consent, randomization, allocation concealment, and blinding within clinical trials and why such studies are vital in real-life. These activities have been delivered by the authors at science festivals and to children in the classroom. Examples include students being randomised to one of two jars which contain balloons with or without a hole which they then have to try to inflate, or being randomised to two groups of different biscuits (plain or chocolate). Depending on the activity, results are summarised using a tally chart. Terminology bingo, using different terms and their definitions within a clinical trial is also described in the article.
Comments from the judging panel included:
“This is a highly accessible and engaging paper that highlights an important application of statistics. The activity that is described is versatile and having extension activities means it can be implemented in a variety educational levels. I believe it will serve as a valuable resource for many statistics instructors.”
“I found the experimental idea to be clever and the article to be well-written – with a nice focus on DOE terminology.”
Access the full paper here: Bonnett LJ, Dwan K, Dodd S. Clinical trials concocted for the classroom. Teach Stat 2024;46:105–112
Read more about the 2024 Peter Holmes Prize here: MacGillivray H. Peter Holmes Prize announcement 2024. Teach Stat 2025;47:3-4.