Contact Info
Director
Dana Somers
somersd@dickinson.edu
Administrative Assistant
Becky White
whitere@dickinson.edu
Phone
717-245-1978
Quantitative Reasoning Center,
Waidner-Boyd Lee Spahr Library
Mission
The Quantitative Reasoning Center supports students in any course with quantitative content—whether in mathematics, science, social science, or the humanities. Our QR tutors and Quantitative Reasoning Associates (QRAs) have been recommended by faculty and trained in techniques based in the science of learning. As such, they help students learn how to learn.
QR tutors have dual purposes:
- To assist students in general quantitative areas
- To assist students with discipline-specific courses based on the tutor’s area of expertise.
The general quantitative areas that our QR tutors can assist students with are:
- Organizing an Excel spreadsheet
- Making graphs in Excel
- Using a scientific calculator
- Computing statistics with or without a graphing calculator
- Analyzing data sets
- Calculating unit conversions
- Understanding the order of operations
- Reviewing for the quantitative portion of the GRE
Schedule for One-on-One Tutoring Appointments
If you would like an appointment, please click here to view the current tutor schedule. Please visit the "Tutors by Courses" and/or "General Quantitative Support" tabs to identify tutors who can help with your specific need.
Workshops Spring 2025
| Title | Date/Time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction to Pivot Tables | Feb. 5th OR* Feb. 6th 12:00 - 1:00 pm | This workshop will introduce participants to using pivot tables in Microsoft Excel. Participants should have basic Excel skills to attend this workshop. Pivot tables are commonly used in industries related to data, finance, business, and accounting to sort, reorganize, pivot, collapse, and compare data sets. In this workshop, participants will be introduced to a variety of tips and tricks for creating and using pivot tables. |
| GIS Part 1: Introduction to GIS | Feb. 19th 12:00 - 1:00 pm | This workshop is the first in a two-part series. Participants will be introduced to ESRI ArcGIS Pro and an overview of GIS will be provided. The session will introduce types of data, loading shapefiles, changing coordinate systems, and creating a map. No background in GIS is necessary to attend this workshop. |
| GIS Part 2: GIS Aesthetics and Analyses | Feb. 26th 12:00 - 1:00 pm | This workshop is the second in a two-part series. If participants have no background in GIS, then it is highly recommended that they attend the first session, too. This workshop will use the maps from the previous workshop to explore types of maps, colors, symbology, and how to make the map your own. We will also begin to explore data manipulation and built-in analytical tools. |
| Introduction to R | Mar. 21st 12:00 - 1:00 pm | This workshop is designed to give participants an introduction to programming in R. Some background in coding is helpful, but no prior R experience is needed. This session will use select R packages (dplyr, tidyr, tidyverse, ggplot2) to begin to import, clean, analyze, and visualize data. Some coverage of troubleshooting and crowdsourcing will also be provided. |
