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Abstract:
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From the eugenics promoted by Francis Galton, Karl Pearson, R.A. Fisher, and others, to the use of racially biased algorithms, statistics has a long and difficult history with race. Addressing these issues directly, as an integral part of undergraduate course material, can better serve students in probability and statistics courses and in their future dealings with statistics. Teaching this history humanizes the field, acknowledging the flaws of past practitioners and forcing us to reckon with our own biases as we contribute to the field. Students can then see statistics as a discipline created by humans and continually in a process of revision rather than as handed down, fully formed. Presenting Fisher’s eugenics beliefs and his use of statistics toward these purposes alongside his fundamental contributions to the field provides students with a richer understanding of statistics, its power, and its peril. In this paper, I discuss such a lesson and my experience using it in undergraduate courses. I find that it elicits more critical engagement with the material, which can both improve learning outcomes in a course and contribute to important work towards righting historical wrongs.
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