Department of Statistics, UCLA

GAISE and many school curriculum reforms around the world aim to enhance the process of statistical inquiry across the curriculum from a very early age and to make young students statistically literate. Taking advantage of students’ interests outside the classroom to engage them in data gathering about themselves and bringing their data back to the classroom is an alternative that Statistics South Africa initiated with the SOCCER4Stats program described in this paper.  We discuss how this program can be used to include more statistics in the Commom Core Standards of the K-12 curriculum. The paper assesses the incidence of soccer interest among youth in the United States.