We asked contributors to talk about how they spend the first day of class is a randomization-based course. The three contributors focused on motivating the study of statistics and introducing students to key ideas, whether or not the curriculum is randomization-based.
| Getting Students Excited about Statistics | Kari Lock Morgan |
| First Day of Class: Observational Units and Variables | Allan Rossman |
| Teaching by Chance | Rob Gould |
| Introducing the Logic of Inference on Day One | Soma Roy |
Click here to view snippets.
I used the activity mentioned in the link below in my high-school non-AP course when we started randomization-based inference. But this year I’m teaching a college course in the Spring (2015) so I might use the “Aunt Belinda” situation from that post on Day One. I think this fits in Rob’s paradigm. (Hey! I got to use paradigm in a post! )
http://bestcase.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/randomization1/
Or I might do something more like Kari’s, which has been super-effective for me in the past. I tend to use US Census data (because I’m a Fathom guy and Fathom makes Census microdata so easy to get). The task has been to get some data, make a bunch of graphs, and try to understand what they say. THEN you find something interesting to you, and make a “claim”: a statement that can be either true or false. Finally, you have to come up with a data display—some visualization—that speaks to the claim one way or another.
As Keri says, this gives students a lot of ownership: these Census claims are often personal and powerful: “Blacks get less education than others” from an African-American student. “The older an Asian is, the more likely he or she is an immigrant.” “Women get paid less than men.”