Math students partner with the Bloomington-Normal Transit System to gather data for a study on their services.

More than four hundred Math students rode local buses in order to gather data for a study on the services provided by the Bloomington-Normal Transit System. Students collected data to help determine if changes would help the Transit System better serve its customers. According to Dr. Mike Plantholt, Professor of Mathematics and co-director of the project, "We felt this would be a good opportunity to get students involved for two reasons. First, the students are in MAT 111, Data and Chance, and this a real experience in the gathering of data. Second, the project goal is to help Bloomington-Normal Public Transit better serve its riders, so we feel this is a good opportunity for students and faculty to help the local community."

The study was organized by the Mathematics Department and by ISU's newly formed Statistics Consulting Center , which were contacted by the Bloomington-Normal Transit System to help with this project. Dr. Plantholt and Professor of Mathematics Dr. Jinadasa Gamage co-direct the project, while a mathematics graduate student, Maliha Niitsu, is the main coordinator.

For three days, students rode the buses all day long, in 2-hour shifts, on each of the 15 different bus routes, for a total of about 225 hours of observation and data collection each day. Most student riders are participating as part of a project for the general education class MAT 111: Data and Chance.  Mathematics Instructional Assistant Professors Kevin Boyer, Anne Schmidt, Gina Leffers, Tom Ferry, and Stephanie O'Leary-Johnson are coordinating their classes.

After the data was collected, it was analyzed by mathematics graduate students Erica Ladewski, Lani Narciso, and Elisha Fuchs, with a report and recommendations due to the Transit System by the end of the semester.