TOPIC 8: Other determinants & developments in Statistics education
Statistics is a very broad discipline encompassing so many areas of practical application. In fact doesn’t everyone need to learn (and be taught) Statistics? Scientific logic is our business. Statisticians can often be most helpful by getting perspective on all aspects of a particular problem and then contributing ideas related to scientific method. What is the connection between quantitative and qualitative research method? Is statistics the cure for all diseases? How crucial is the fact that Scientific inference is broader than statistical inference? In Topic 8 we will include sessions which address special aspects of teaching statistics which do not necessarily fall under one of the main conference themes covered in Topics 1-7.
SESSION 8A: Mass media and Statistics
8A1: MEDIA STUDIES AND STATISTICS: REAL-WORLD DEMANDS, CLASSROOM QUANDARIES, AND ON-LINE SOLUTIONS
Fred Zandpour and Tony Rimmer
California State University – Fullerton, United States
Communication professionals include journalists and advertising/public relations executives, faced with an explosive growth of numerical data have to make sense of an increasingly complex world in an ever-changing media environment. We argue that the classroom training in statistical thinking that we offer our students is not currently responding to the challenges coming at us from the real-world media where we hope to place these students. We also recognize our students’ interest in hands-on problem-solving and their increasing sophistication with online technologies in building our argument for more discipline-specific training in statistics, and the grounding of this statistical training online, beginning with the integration of online statistical simulations into the curriculum.
8A2: NEWS-BASED LEARNING OF STATISTICS
Wing K. Fung and Philip L.H. Yu
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Almost every day we come across statistics in our newspapers. Understanding these figures correctly not only gives us a better understanding of our social environment but also helps to prevent us from being taken in by misleading advertisements. This project investigates the teaching and learning of statistics through the use of statistical figures commonly found in newspapers and other mass media. These statistics have been used in specially designed courses such as “How to Read Figures in the Newspapers,” a general education course offered to undergraduate students with or without a statistics background. Students find the topics interesting and appreciate the wide-ranging applications of statistics in different areas.
8A3: USING MEDIA REPORTS TO DEVELOP STATISTICAL LITERACY IN YEAR 10 STUDENTS
Lynda Merriman
The University of Auckland, New Zealand
Statistical literacy should be a key goal in preparing students to understand statistical information which is often reported in the media. This research is centred on the teaching of a specially designed unit of work on statistical literacy to ninety Year 10 (14-year-old) high school students that emphasised media reports both in the teaching approach and in the pre- and post- assessments. The students’ test responses were analysed using the SOLO taxonomy framework for assessment and results were compared to those in previous studies. The issues that arose in the development of the teaching unit, the preliminary results on changes in levels of statistical literacy observed, and the factors that could affect the development of statistical literacy, such as mathematical and English ability, are briefly reported. The students’ and teachers’ reactions to the unit of instruction using media reports are also discussed.
SESSION 8B: Statistics and the law
8B1: A DIRECT METHOD OF STATISTICS TEACHING IN LABOUR, SOCIAL, JURIDICAL OR ECONOMIC STUDIES
Navarrete Álvarez, E., Rosales Moreno, M.J., Huete Morales, M.D.,
Vargas Jiménez, M, Abad Montes, F.
University of Granada, Spain
Statistics teaching cannot be done in the same way for all kinds of university pupils, especially without changing the kind of studies that they have seen. For example, it is not the same for students of Sciences or Engineering as for students of any Social or Juridical field. We address this kind of pupil (Social, Juridical, Labour or even Economics). We attempt a direct approach: from any situation or real supposition with real data, extract from such field several questions of interest that should adapt to statistics language, then solve with the necessary statistics instruments, explaining such to students in that moment, if necessary, and, finally, returning to the beginning, to give an interpretation of the results, taking into account the pupils’ area of studies or professional orientation.
8B2: STATISTICS IN COURT: THE ULTIMATE COMMUNICATION CHALLENGE
Janet Chaseling
Griffith University, Australia
Statistical teachers and consultants must target their explanations to meet the level of their audience. When statistics are placed within a legal court setting, three audiences must be addressed; the barrister, the judge and the jury. In the adversarial system the statistical expert will present evidence in chief and then be subjected to cross examination. In a pre-trial (voir dire) a judge will determine whether or not he will allow evidence to be presented before the jury; he/she may consider it to be too confusing for his/her jury or he may be concerned at the prejudicial weight of small probabilities. Drawing on real experiences, suggestions are made of how teaching and communication in a court setting can best be implemented. Reference is also made to the different models of deliberation practised by jurors.
8B3: DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS IN FORENSIC SCIENCE
David Lucy
University of Edinburgh, Scotland
The widespread international adoption of DNA technology in forensic science over the last twenty years or so has resulted in some standardised methods of data collection and data interpretation. The impetus generated by the systematic approach characteristic of forensic DNA has carried into other fields of forensic science, typically resulting in forensic scientists wondering whether the same approaches can be applied to their own specialisms. Workers in areas of forensic interest such as ballistics and trace evidence have for some time collected in a systematic manner data connected with those fields. However there are many more areas of forensic science which require large bodies of systematically collected data. Some of these areas are so rarely used in forensic science that the required data is not available, and for a few areas of evidence it is infeasible, if not impossible to collect suitable data.
SESSION 8C: Projects and competitions in Statistics education
8C1: DEVELOPING PROJECTS BASED ON STUDENTS' DATA IN INTRODUCTORY STATISTICS
Aklilu Zeleke
Michigan State University, United States
Carl Lee, John Daniels
Central Michigan University, United States
Over the last decade, the use of real world projects in introductory statistics courses has increased in popularity. Real world projects provide students with an opportunity to learn the entire process of a statistical investigation. Such projects fit the principles of active learning well. However, due to the time and effort required by both the instructor and students, it is difficult to sustain the project activity for a long time period. Hence, the final project reports are often disappointing. Through an NSF funded project, we have constructed a real-time online database. Students collect their own data and enter it into the database. Various activities are now available at http://stat.cst.cmich.edu/statact/. We assign group projects using the data collected by the students themselves. This paper shares how the process of statistical investigation is implemented into the project by using the students’ own data.
8C2: DESIGNING, PROMOTING, AND IMPLEMENTING A STATISTICS POSTER COMPETITION FOR PRE-COLLEGE STUDENTS
John Gabrosek
Grand Valley State University, United States
The American Statistical Association began a national Statistics Poster Competition in the United States in 1990. The competition provides an ideal way to introduce students to the world of statistics. Statistical posters require that students select and define a topic of interest, design a corresponding study, collect data, appropriately present the data, and effectively communicate their findings to a non-statistical audience via graphical and, perhaps, inferential methods. The national competition spawned numerous regional and state competitions throughout the U.S. We provide a brief history of the national statistics poster competition. We describe the experiences of a group of statisticians at Grand Valley State University who began a statewide statistics poster competition in 2000 in the state of Michigan. We provide lessons learned for those hoping to start a competition in their own regions.
8C3: USE OF PROJECTS FOR TEACHING SOCIAL STATISTICS: CASE STUDY
Theodore Chadjipadelis, Ioannis Andreadis
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Modern teaching methods require students to be active participants in the learning process. Assigning projects to students sets a frame which cultivates the interactivity between the instructor and the students and motivates the students to explore the field. The objective of this paper is to present the results from the use of individual directed projects in the introductory statistics course at the Department of Political Sciences of Aristotle, University of Thessaloniki. We compare this group with another group of students who were taught the introductory statistics course with conventional methods. The results indicate that students in the project-based group grasped statistical concepts and ideas at a higher rate than students in the control group, had a better attitude towards statistics, and did not think that statistics is as hard to learn as students in the other group.
SESSION 8D: History and the teaching of Statistics
8D1: PIAGET’S VIEWPOINT ON THE TEACHING OF PROBABILITY: A BREAKING-OFF WITH THE HISTORICAL NOTION OF CHANCE?
Ernesto San Martín
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Piaget’s constructivism and its further developments are used as the conceptual framework to relate, in the learning process, students’ age with specific topics in probability and statistics. Such a perspective consists of opposing the notion of chance to that of a reversible sequence and, therefore, to causality. Nevertheless, when the contributions to probability theory developed during the 17th to the 19th centuries are considered, it can be noticed that the concept of chance is a characterization of “our ignorance of the causal chain.” This fact motivates two questions which are discussed in this manuscript. The first one consists of understanding what constitutes the breaking-off between Cournot’s viewpoint of probability and the traditional one. The second question consists of exploring what kind of probability and statistics teaching would be developed if the traditional viewpoint on chance and probability is considered.
8D2: TEACHING STATISTICS IN A CRITICAL WAY: HISTORICAL, PHILOSOPHICAL AND POLITICAL ASPECTS OF STATISTICS
Karen François
Free University Brussels, Belgium
Nele Bracke
Ghent University, Belgium
In this paper we sketch the history and the philosophy of statistics and probability theory and the connections to its political aspects. Knowledge of the cultural embeddedness of statistics and probability theory is an added value in the teaching thereof. The use of statistics and probability is a phenomenon with which everyone is confronted on a daily basis. Beside literacy, numeracy is an important challenge for education. In order to succeed in this task, the traditional curriculum (technique-oriented and individual, competition-oriented) will need to be sacrificed for a curriculum in which there is room for the cultural aspects of statistics and probability theory. For this purpose, cooperative learning is a didactic entry which is suitable for interaction and critical input of pupils.
8D3: PARALLELS, SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES IN TEACHING STATISTICS DURING THE 20TH CENTURY IN COLOMBIA AND MEXICO
Roberto Behar Gutiérrez
Universidad del Valle – Cali, Colombia
Mario Miguel Ojeda
Universidad Veracruzana, México
The evolution of teaching Statistics in the past century in México and Colombia is presented, emphasizing the parallels and differences. Two stories are told, pointing out common events and similarities, in order to show the exogenous forces and the local contributions to the development of statistics in these countries. The main local contributions to the teaching of statistics in higher education in the 20th century are identified. Finally, several strategic ways of improving the teaching of Statistics for non-statisticians in Latin-American countries are summarized, considering the particular historic context. We propose an approach considering the global and the local historic arguments to promote the value of statistics in the development of modern society.
8D4: FIFTEEN YEARS OF IASE: MISSION AND INSTRUMENTS
Gilberte Schuyten
Ghent University, Belgium
M. Gabriella Ottaviani
Università Di Roma “La Sapienza”, Italy
Statistics education (interpreted in the broadest sense possible) promotes the understanding of the basic concepts of statistics in society at large, as well as in other discipline areas and /or in other professional bodies and contributes to giving statistics more visibility. In order to further the improvement of statistics education at all levels and in all contexts, the International Statistical Institute (ISI) established in 1949 the Committee on Statistical Education, which ceased to exist in 1991 when the International Association for Statistical Education (IASE) was founded. In this paper we describe the work carried out by this association, and its role in promoting both statistics education and research in statistics education. It is mainly based on information available on the IASE web site, editorials and reports in the yearly IASE Reviews.