Undergraduate Statistics Education: An Introduction and Review of Selected Literature

A recent symposium on "Improving the Work Force of the Future: Opportunities in Undergraduate Statistics Education" was held to focus attention on the importance of undergraduate statistics education. The symposium and the approval of curriculum guidelines for undergraduate degrees by the Board of Directors of the American Statistical Association have done much to define the current state of undergraduate education in statistics and suggest directions for improvement. This article summarizes the activities leading up to the symposium and provides a brief summary of six papers from the symposium that have been published. The article concludes with a discussion of some of the outstanding issues that remain to be addressed.