Statistical Consulting With Undergraduates - A Community Outreach Approach


Book: 
Proceedings of the sixth international conference on teaching statistics, Developing a statistically literate society
Authors: 
Jersky, B.
Editors: 
Phillips, B.
Category: 
Pages: 
Online
Year: 
2002
Publisher: 
International Statistical Institute
URL: 
http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/publications/1/3a1_jers.pdf
Abstract: 

At Sonoma State University, we offer a 2-hour per week class in Statistical Consulting. All our statistics majors must take the class twice, and other students may also take the class. The only prerequisite for the class is a semester of Elementary Statistics. This leads to a very varied class, in terms of statistical ability and experience. Our clients at the Statistical Consulting Center are largely from two sources, namely other departments at the university, and local non-profit organizations. Both these sources typically have projects that are suitable for our consulting class, so that both unsophisticated and advanced students can benefit from it. I will present some examples of these projects, and discuss the perhaps surprisingly high levels of satisfaction of the students, in terms of their learning objectives, and of the clients, in terms of their needs. Faculty also enjoy teaching the class, and the university gets much positive publicity in the community.

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

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