Our approach to teaching statistics to economics students is presented in our 2-volume book. Though written as a textbook for economics students, a broad population who seem to recognize the universalism of the approach is using it. We discuss here the dilemmas encountered in deciding course content and level of mathematical sophistication. The course at Tel Aviv University has undergone several changes, reflecting the changing viewpoints of the "consumer" (Dept. of Economics) and the "supplier" (Dept. of Statistics and OR). Presently, the course is almost as rigorous as the courses offered to statistics majors. Students appreciate the challenges arising in statistical theory, even if they lack sophisticated mathematical reasoning. We illustrate by examples how we teach relatively high-level mathematical concepts in statistical inference, such as maximum likelihood estimation and the Neyman-Pearson Lemma.
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education