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Activity Number:
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367
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Type:
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Contributed
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Date/Time:
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Tuesday, August 4, 2009 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
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Sponsor:
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Section on Statistical Education
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| Abstract - #305767 |
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Title:
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Why We Should Teach Introductory Applied Statistics Courses Backwards
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Author(s):
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Bill Rybolt*+
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Companies:
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Babson College
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Address:
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231 Forest Street, Babson Park, MA, 02457-0310,
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Keywords:
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hypothesis ; education ; exploratory ; statistics ; backward
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Abstract:
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We should reverse the sequence of topics normally taught in introductory statistics courses. Instead of beginning with presenting data, we should start with hypothesis testing. The essence of statistics is not describing data sets but testing hypotheses. Students should get the big picture and the less intuitive concepts first. Topics normally taught at the beginning can then be covered as aids in sampling, cleansing, and understanding the data needed to test hypotheses. In this presentation, we describe some exploratory work with this approach. On day one students were given a paper copy of a data set containing thousands of values and were given ten minutes to answer the question "Is there evidence that such and such is not true?" This presentation describes the results this exploratory work and gives other examples of how introductory statistics should be taught backwards.
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- The address information is for the authors that have a + after their name.
- Authors who are presenting talks have a * after their name.
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