Last Stat Chat of the 2010/2011 Academic Year

The last Stat Chat of the 2010/2011 academic year is set for Tuesday April 21, 2011. Stat Chat is an informal, but informative, monthly get-together of local statistics educators. We meet in room 205 of the Olin-Rice Science Center at Macalester College [See Map].

The agenda for this Stat Chat is as follows:

• 6:00 - 6:30, Dinner and presentation of two draft posters for USCOTS
• 6:30 - 7:00, Journal Club: The Math-Stats Course (Laura Chihara)
• 7:00 - 8:00, Main Event: Statistical Literacy Update Updates on recent work and a preview of USCOTS (Milo Schield and Marc Isaacson)

During this month's journal club, we will discuss the math stats course including, what the goals of a math stats course should be, and the topics that are essential to this course. To guide the discussion, consider the table of contents from these two books:

• Larsen and Marx, An Introduction to Mathematical Statistics and Its Applications
• Chihara and Hesterberg, Mathematical Statistics with Resampling and R

In the first part of the main discussion, Milo Schield will discuss Models and Assumptions: Statistics and Assembly. Checking assumptions is a critical activity in modeling. Often times the assumptions used in analyzing data influence — if not determine — the results. Milo will discuss an ISI draft paper that argues that statistics have the same status as models — they involve choices in assembly that influence — if not determine — the results. One of the five elements of the AACU 2009 Quantitative Literacy Rubric was assumptions:

Ability to make and evaluate important assumptions in estimation, modeling, and data analysis.

The ISI paper extends this focus on assumptions to include the formation of categories, measures and summary statistics. While statistics may have little to say about which assumptions are best, statistical literacy can highlight how choices in how groups are defined or how quantities are measured can influence the results.

In the second part of the main event, Marc Isaacson will present the USCOTS Theater-teaching activity: Multiple choice Olympic Success. This activity incorporates audience involvement to evaluate data from Olympic Competition results through the use of rankings. While rankings are commonly encountered by students in their everyday life, they are rarely discussed in an introductory statistics class. Audience members will be presented a handout, a single question and then asked to respond via text message or smartphone. Results will be collected via the internet and discussed instantaneously with an interesting twist.

Lastly, Milo Schield will present the USCOTS Theater-teaching activity: Where do Statistics come from? This activity incorporates audience involvement to compare related rates or percentages. Central question: Where do statistics come from; how are they assembled; what difference do their definitions make in their size or in the size of their association?

PLEASE RSVP to Danny Kaplan so that we can plan sensibly for dinner. As always, last-minute deciders and guests are welcome.

CATALST Presentation at NCTM Research Presession

Zieffler presents on CATALST. On
the screen is Robin Lock, Joan Garfield
and Robert delMas.

Andrew Zieffler recently presented at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Research Presession in Indianapolis, IN. The presentation, entitled It Takes a Village to Effect Change: The CATALST Course Teaching Experiment [PDF version of the slides], documents a two-semester teaching experiment currently being undertaken as part of the NSF-funded CATALST grant (DUE-0814433).

Zieffler presented this work in an invited session, Research in Statistics Education: Current Efforts and Future Directions, organized by James Tarr (University of Missouri). Other participants in the session included Randall E. Groth (Salisbury University), Sandra Madden (University of Massachusetts Amherst), and Tim Jacobbe (University of Florida). The session also included two discussants, Hollylynne Stohl Lee (North Carolina State University), and Rich Lehrer (Vanderbilt University).

For more information related to the CATALST grant:

• Download the slides of the NCTM presentation [PDF]
• Visit the CATALST website [Website]

Michelle Everson Receives Waller Award

Michelle Everson

Michelle Everson, lecturer in the Department of Educational Psychology, has received the 2011 American Statistical Association Waller Education Award in recognition of her outstanding contributions to and innovation in the teaching of elementary statistics. Nominees for the Waller must be early in their career, with 10 or fewer years of full-time teaching and responsibility for teaching the first course in statistics in a two- or four-year college, or research university. The award will be presented to Everson at the Joint Statistical Meetings in Miami Beach this summer.

Congratulations Michelle!

Statistics Education Paper Published in JRSS

The Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (Series A) has published a statistic education paper written by Chris Wild, Maxine Pfannkuch, Matt Regan and Nick Horton. The paper is being made available for free by Wiley for a limited time period. [Access the paper here.]

The paper is titled Towards More Accessible Conceptions of Statistical Inference and includes discussions by John MacInnes, Peter Holmes, Adrian Bowman, Jim Ridgway, John Pullinger, James Nicholson, Thomas King and Clare M. Woodford, Julian Stander and Rana Moyeed, Ramesh Kapadia, Alan Agresti, Janet Ainley and Dave Pratt, Murray Aitken, Adrian Baddeley, Manfred Borovcnik, Mike Camden, Len Cook, Neville Davies, N. I. Fisher, Joan Garfield and Andrew Zieffler, Andrew Gelman, Harvey Goldstein, Robert Gould, Sander Greenland, Paul Hewson, Kuldeep Kumar, D. V. Lindley, Thomas A. Louis, Helen MacGillivray, Xiao-Li Meng, Deborah Nolan, Sastry Pantula and Ron Wasserstein, Emanuel Parzen, Brian Pink, J.-F. Plante and N. Reid, Donald B. Rubin, Richard L. Scheaffer, Milo Schield, Michael Stuart, and Dennis Trewin.

Robin Lock to Visit UMN and Present at Stat Chat

Robin asks the perennial question...

Robin Lock from St. Lawrence University will be visiting the University of Minnesota in the upcoming week. He will also be presenting at Stat Chat on Tuesday March 29, 2011. Stat Chat is an informal, but informative, monthly get-together of local statistics educators. We meet in room 205 of the Olin-Rice Science Center at Macalester College [See Map].

The agenda for this Stat Chat is as follows:

• 6:00 - 6:30, Dinner
• 6:30 - 7:00, Journal Club: Situation Normal --- from Alex Bellos's book, Here's Looking at Euclid (Sharon Mosgrove)
• 7:00 - 8:00, Main Event: Starting Inference with Bootstraps and Randomizations (Robin Lock)

Abstract for Robin's Talk
Computer-intensive methods such as bootstrapping and randomization tests provide a way to introduce students to fundamental ideas of statistical inference that require relatively few prerequisites. I'll discuss an ongoing project to revamp an introductory course to use such methods as the starting point for inference.

PLEASE RSVP to Danny Kaplan so that we can plan sensibly for dinner. As always, last-minute deciders and guests are welcome.

Stat Chat (Follow-Up)

On Tuesday February 22, 2011 the Catalysts for Change presented the CATALST curriculum at the monthly Stat Chat meeting. After a rousing dinner, Stat Chatters were invited to take part in an activity that not only gave them an opportunity to witness first-hand how the course is taught, but also introduced them to the metaphor of cooking that has become ubiquitous with the CATALST curriculum.

After that activity, a brief overview of the entire course was shown. The activities and student homeworks for Unit 1 were given a more thorough examination. Within this part of the presentation, TinkerPlots was also demonstrated for the participants. Stat Chatters were also given a cursory look at Unit 2 and methods of introducing the randomization and bootstrap tests were revealed.

The slides used can be obtained here. [PDF]

Catalysts in Japan: Part II

Bob is wearing a tie...or is
it Photoshop?

Joan and Bob gave three invited presentations in Tokyo, Japan, as guests of Rikkyo University and The University of Tokyo. On March 5, 2011 they presented Using Activity-Based Instruction to Develop Students' Understanding of Statistics at the Japanese Conference on Teaching Statistics. On March 6, 2011 they presented Assessing Important Learning Outcomes for a First Course in Statistics at the annual meeting of the Japanese Statistical Society. On March 8, 2011 they gave three talks about their NSF-funded work in statistics education to the faculty affiliated with the Center for Statistics and Information (CSI) of Rikkyo University. Despite the earthquakes which occurred as their flight home was boarding, they arrived safely home after an interesting and enjoyable week in Japan.