Jeff Witmer (Oberlin College)
Abstract
As educators we should be models of good statistical practice for our students. But what is good practice? What should we be teaching to make our courses more useful? How can we help the discipline of statistics continue to evolve? I have a few opinions to share, among them: (1) teach students about the importance of the size of an effect (and not just the size of a p-value); (2) if the p-value is small, then say that we have a discernible effect, rather than calling the result “significant;” and (3) add logistic regression to introductory statistics.
Bio Sketch:
Jeff Witmer is Professor of Statistics at Oberlin College. He is a former Editor of the Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education and operates the Isolated Statisticians listserv. He has co-authored many books, including Stat2: Modeling with Regression and ANOVA, Statistics for the Life Science, and Activity-Based Statistics.