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Abstract:
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Computational ability is increasingly required to apply statistics to modern scientific problems, but students in the sciences typically lack these integral skills. For many scientific fields, statistics preparation is considered vital, and has been readily incorporated into graduate programs across the country. Consequently, many scientific degree programs expect graduate students to acquire these statistical computing skills in an applied statistics course. However, a gap remains between the computational skills required for scientific research and those taught in statistics courses. We examined environmental science faculty member’s computational expectations of graduate students, and graduate environmental science students’ computational experiences in implementing statistics in their research. Interviews provided evidence of a gap between students’ coursework preparation and the statistical computing expectations of their research. A suite of ongoing computational workshops is proposed to help alleviate the computational burdens experiences by these students. These workshops have no barriers to entry and teach common skills found to be necessary in students' research.
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