Other

  • Recognizing that there is a continuing need to encourage and promote the understanding and application of statistics, the American Statistical Association sponsors a statistical poster competition for grades K-12 that allows students to discover and express their creativity in the analysis of data occurring in their everyday lives. A statistical poster is a visual display containing two or more related graphics that summarize a set of data, that look at the data from different points of view, and that answer some specific questions about the data. If we focus on the mechanical aspects of collecting data and rote learning of how to choose and draw an appropriate graph to summarize it, we still have indeed added another time-consuming activity to the crowded curriculum. In the classroom, graphing activities for poster competitions can be integrated learning activities that can enhance the curriculum rather than burden it.

  • The overwhelming majority of the public will never directly consult a National Statistical Office (NSO) or communicate with it directly. For most citizens, the news media (newspapers, radio and television) provide their only exposure to official statistics. Through them, the NSO achieves its goal of informing the public of economic and social conditions to a degree it could not achieve with its own resources. Consequently, collaboration with the news media as the NSO's gatekeepers to the public is of great importance. As journalists frequently change assignments and as many of them usually have no formal training in statistics, providing a form of "education" in statistical literacy is an ongoing concern for the NSO. Similarly, making the NSO staff aware of the needs and requirements of journalists is an essential step in communicating effectively through the media. The paper will outline the various elements of the media relations program that Statistics Canada has developed over the years.

  • This paper reviews the development of higher statistics education in China. Though there has been a clear progress in the theory and direction of the development of higher statistics education in China in recent years, statistics educators' are still debating the issue of the future. They will continue their research work. This paper will then make use of related data to analyze the development of the higher statistics education in China in recent years. It concludes that although there are some problems, higher statistics education in China is developing in both theory and practice. The future of the development of higher statistics education in China will be optimistic.

  • In the present paper statistical education in India at school, college and university levels is discussed in detail. A brief account of statistical education and research activities at some premier institutions is presented. Steps taken by Government of India to popularize statistics are highlighted. Ways and means for further improvement in statistical education at national and international levels are also suggested.

  • This paper presents an overview of statistics education in Hong Kong. While Statistics is not considered a major domain in school mathematics, it is incorporated into all levels of the mathematics curriculum starting with Primary Two. As Hong Kong is currently undergoing an education reform, statistics education is being directed towards a student-centered, activity-based, and hands-on approach with students encouraged to collect, present and interpret data, basing their work on concrete examples from everyday life whenever possible. Student learning is expected to progress from concrete to abstract, and calculators and computers are expected to be used to facilitate student learning. Implications of these approaches are also discussed.

  • The objective of this paper is to make known some activities in Stochastic Education in the Ibero-American countries. To achieve this objective I have collected information about working groups; Conferences on Statistics Education, Conferences on Statistics and Mathematics Education with papers about Stochastic Education; Journals that devote special issues to the Statistics Education and resources on Internet. Below I summarize this information.

  • In this paper, two examples of multilevel modeling as part of the analysis of data from HIV evaluation studies are presented. Strategies for teaching multilevel models for each type of data are discussed. The first, a panel study, uses multiple linear regression models to show how a hierarchical linear model can be developed. The second, a repeated cross-sectional design, uses simple analysis of variance models to show how a random coefficients model can be fit to the data. Complex multilevel models may be easier to understand and apply when broken down into these more familiar strategies. Analyses are presented using the HLM program and SAS.

  • The U.S. Federal statistical agencies have long faced the challenge of creating an expert, stable workforce with skills in census and survey methods relevant to the production of official statistics - interdisciplinary skills not available in a single academic department. Numerous statistical commissions identified this need, but no ameliorative action was taken until the fiscal year 1991 Boskin Initiative for Economic Statistics promoted funding. The Joint Program in Survey Methodology was selected through a process administered by the National Science Foundation. Funding now comes through a contract with participation from twelve statistical agencies. Present and future agency employees participate in academic and short courses and seminars and are enrolled in citation, certificate, and graduate degree programs. Survey problems are addressed in courses that allow transfer of knowledge between the work environment and the academic learning experience. This partnership has substantially enhanced the capabilities of the federal statistical workforce. The paper reviews challenges and successes through this partnership.

  • For many years null hypothesis testing (NHT) has been the dominant form of statistical analysis in psychology. It has also been subject to periodic criticisms from within the field of psychology. In the past decade these occasional criticisms have turned into a more or less steady stream which have lead some to call for an outright ban on NHT in psychology, while others have called for greater use of alternative procedures. The solution lies neither in banning NHT nor in relying solely on alternative procedures, but in "reforming" NHT, replacing a-theoretical null hypotheses with theoretically meaningful hypotheses. Such reform requires that training of researchers emphasize parameter estimation and the testing of theoretical models, an approach that exists in some areas of psychology and appears to be common in other sciences. Such an emphasis will help ensure that the statistical hypothesis being tested matches the substantive hypothesis of interest. I will discuss the changes that are occurring in psychology and propose further changes that are still needed.

  • The widespread use of rating scales in applied research fields implies need of statistical methods applicable to various types of studies involving ordinal response data. The aim of this paper is to present a teaching model of joining research courses in rating scale data analysis for statisticians and applied scientists together in order to stimulate inter-disciplinary communication. The participants experienced the complexity of applied research problems that involve subjective assessments on scales and also some of the possibilities and limitations of novel and classical statistical methods of analysis.

Pages