A cooperative effort among six colleges - Dartmouth, Grinnell, King, Middlebury, Princeton, and Spelman - is resulting in the development and teaching of new introductory mathematics course called CHANCE. CHANCE treats issues that are reported in the news: statistical problems related to AIDS, the effects of lowering serum cholesterol on heart attacks, the use of DNA fingerprinting in the courts, maintaining quality of manufactured goods in the face of variation, informed patient decision making, reliability of political polls, and so forth. Students study the newspaper accounts of these topics, articles in general science journals, such as Chance, Science, Nature, and Scientific American, and finally the original research papers. Summary modules, student projects, classroom experiences, data sets, bibliographies, and other materials are being disseminated to both college and precollege teachers through an electronic network.
