This paper highlights the need for teaching statistics with real data in order to make statistics attractive and meaningful to social sciences students. Data coming from current research work are ideal for teaching. Students become interested in statistics and keep their interest as long as statistics is applied to data related to their own fields. Promoting discussion in class around current social issues also emphasizes the value of data to public policy, and the need for social theories to explain and interpret social data. This paper also stresses the need for a textbook concentrating on statistical concepts and thinking, with many real-life examples illustrating the relevance of statistics to understand social issues and making the introductory statistics course an attractive and enlightening course for social sciences students.
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