The Role of Statistics in Science and Everyday Life: A First-Year Seminar

• Activity Number: 478
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 4, 2010 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Education
• Author(s): Jessica Chapman*+
• Companies: St. Lawrence University
• Keywords: Statistics Education ; Student Research Projects ; Introductory Statistics

Abstract

First Year students at St. Lawrence University are required to take a course that teaches them basic research skills, such as developing a research question and finding and evaluating sources. The actual content of the course is up to the instructor, but typically these courses have themes in the humanities - my charge was to create one for students who interested in quantitative reasoning. The theme of my course was the role of statistics in science and everyday life. In this course we covered a variety of topics ranging from some of the history of statistics to current data-driven issues such as the global climate change debate. I'll describe some of the assignments and readings from the course, students' reactions to those assignments, and some of the research projects students produced. I'll also discuss how some assignments could be integrated into an introductory statistics course.