Journal Article

  • An introductory statistics course is described that is entirely taught from a baseball perspective. Topics in data analysis, including methods for one batch, comparison of batches, and relationships, are communicated using current and historical baseball data sets. Probability is introduced by describing and playing tabletop baseball games. Inference is taught by first making the distinction between a player's "ability" and his "performance", and then describing how one can learn about a player's ability based on his season performance. Baseball issues such as the proper interpretation of situational and "streaky" data are used to illustrate statistical inference.

  • The concepts of hypothesis testing, trade-offs between Type I and Type II error, and the use of power in choosing an appropriate sample size based on power when designing an experiment are routinely included in many introductory statistics courses. However, many students do not fully grasp the importance of these ideas and are unable to implement them in any meaningful way at the conclusion of the course. This paper presents a number of applets intended to help students understand the role of power in hypothesis testing and which allow them to obtain numerical values without having to perform any calculations for a variety of scenarios, complementing some of the applets presented in Aberson, Berger, Healy, and Romero (2002). Ideas are given about how to incorporate the materials into an introductory course.

  • The Journal of Statistics Education (JSE) has a unique structure and an inclusive philosophy that have technical consequences for readers and authors. This paper, a message from the journal's managing editor, explains why the JSE was built to have its unique structure, the format of information available to readers, and the effect the philosophy will have. The paper's Appendix outlines three groups of readers and associated methods of accessing the journal. The Appendix also describes the purpose and contents of the associated JSE Information Service.

  • Many introductory courses teach traditional probability concepts. The objectives of these courses may be better met by emphasizing characteristics of random variation rather than formal probability. To illustrate a different approach, some alternative concepts and related activities are described and discussed.

  • In this paper we analyze the reasons why the teaching of probability is difficult for mathematics teachers, describe the contents needed in the didactical preparation of teachers to teach probability and analyze some examples of activities to carry out this training. These activities take into account the experience at the University of Granada, in courses directed to primary and secondary school teachers as well as in an optional course on Didactics of Statistics, which is included in the Major in Statistical Sciences and Techniques course since 1996. The aim is encouraging other colleagues to organize similar courses at their universities, either as part of their official programs or in their postgraduate training.

  • The Price is Right is a popular U.S. television game show in which contestants play product-pricing games in order to win prizes. Games involve some knowledge of prices, but many involve the element of chance as well. This paper describes a classroom activity I have designed to help teach probability concepts to students in an upper-level course. It is based on the television game show The Price is Right. This exercise is designed to help students better understand basic concepts such as probability rules, common distributions, and expectations. The exercise is intended for an upper-level statistics course, but could easily be adapted for use in an introductory statistics course as well. This paper describes The Price is Right classroom activity in detail. Student evaluations of the activity are also included.

  • This paper outlines one of a series of tutorials developed as part of an introductory statistics course for Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences students. Here we compare two methods of sampling from an aerial photograph to obtain an estimate of the proportion of a particular type of vegetation. One method, transect sampling, is traditionally used by field ecologists, while the other is simple random sampling in a plane. Preparation details and possible extensions to the tutorial are described.

  • In the lottery game Lotto n/N, the winning n numbers are selected randomly and without replacement from {1, 2, 3, ..., N}. The selection of the winning numbers is normally done with a highly sophisticated mechanical device, and one of the appealing aspects of Lotto is that this procedure is seen to be fair and unbiased. An important perceived consequence is that no one (for a given amount of money) is seen to have a better chance of winning than anyone else. Few people would be willing to let an individual perform this task because of possible bias, but do we really know how difficult it is for an individual to be random in selecting numbers? In an experiment to observe the types and degrees of bias an individual might possess, data were collected from students who were asked to perform as 'random' number generators for the Lotto 6/42 game. Data consisting of the winning numbers from the Irish National Lottery game Lotto 6/42 were obtained from previous years, and a statistical package (in this case, S-Plus) was used to generate other simulated data. A comparison of the three sets of data using many of the basic tools in descriptive statistics together with some goodness of fit tests provides a useful exercise for students to test their intuition about randomness and to discover some of the inherent (and sometimes subtle) biases individuals possess when they attempt to be random.

  • There has been much concern about making the curriculum for engineering statistics more relevant to the needs of industry. One proposed solution is to include decision risk analysis in the curriculum. However, the current coverage of decision risk analysis in statistics textbooks is either nonexistent or very introductory. In part, this reflects the fact that decision risk analysis, as currently taught, relies on the complex notion of a utility function.<br>Recent research in decision theory suggests a way of comprehensively and rigorously discussing decision theory without using utility functions. In this new approach, the decision risk analysis course focuses on making decisions so as to maximize the probability of meeting a target. This allows decision theory to be integrated with reliability theory. This course would be more comprehensive than the conventional introductory treatment of decision theory and no more difficult to teach. In addition, integrating decision theory with reliability theory facilitates its incorporation in curricula that currently exclude decision theory.

  • Courses taught using problem-based learning methods give life sciences graduate students direct practice in the statistical reasoning skills needed to choose appropriate procedures for analyzing data from their research studies. This paper describes a graduate-level, case-based biostatistics course designed to cultivate these skills in veterinary medical science students who have had some initial preparation in statistics. The course gives students practical experience by focusing on the analysis of data from actual biomedical research studies. Student evaluations indicated that this course improved the students' ability to understand and apply statistical methods in their research.

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