The bulk of this article was originally presented as a commentary on Neil Ullman's paper "Statistical or Quantitative Thinking as a Fundamental Intelligence", presented at the 1995 Joint Statistical Meetings in Orlando. (Editors' Note: A condensed version of N. Ullman's paper appeared in Vol. 2, No. 1-Winter 1996 of this Newsletter.) The purpose for including it in this publication is to suggest that introductory statistics courses must be radically redesigned, not incrementally improved, if statistics is to assume its rightful place in US society. It is further argued that how to implement this radical revision is basically known; it simply requires combining several suggestions which have been made previously by recognized researchers in the field. While these do not appear radical individually, combining them would result in an introductory course virtually unrecognizable by today's standards.
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