technology
14 May 2018
We need to teach all our students how to design, create, test, debug and use spreadsheets. We need to teach this integrated with mathematics, statistics and computational thinking. Spreadsheets can be a valuable tool in many other subject areas including biology, physics, history and geography, thus facilitating integrated learning experiences. Spreadsheets are versatile and ubiquitous – and most have errors. A web search on “How many spreadsheets have errors?” gives alarming results. The commonly quoted figure is 88%. These spreadsheets with errors are not just little home spreadsheets for cataloguing your Lego collection or planning your next vacation. These spreadsheets […]
5 April 2018
Statistical software for worried students: Appearances matter Let’s be honest. Most students of statistics are taking statistics because they have to. I asked my class of 100 business students who choose to take the quantitative methods course if they did not have to. Two hands went up. Face it – statistics is necessary but not often embraced. But actually it is worse than that. For many people statistics is the most dreaded course they are required to take. It can be the barrier to achieving their career goals as a psychologist, marketer or physician. (And it should be required for many other […]
5 October 2015
In the Northern Hemisphere, it is the start of the school year, and thousands of eager students are beginning their study of statistics. I know this because this is the time of year when lots of people watch my video, Types of Data. On 23rd August the hits on the video bounced up out of their holiday slumber, just as they do every year. They gradually dwindle away until the end of January when they have a second jump in popularity, I suspect at the start of the second semester. One of the first topics in many statistics courses is summary […]
27 July 2015
Three Problems and a Solution Modern teaching methods for statistics have gone beyond the mathematical calculation of trivial problems. Computers can enable large size studies, bringing reality to the subject, but this is not without its own problems. Problem 1: Giving students experience of the whole statistical process There are many reasons for students to learn statistics through running their own projects, following the complete statistical enquiry process, posing a problem, planning the data collection, collecting and cleaning the data, analysing the data and drawing conclusions that relate back to the original problem. Individual projects can be both time consuming and […]
1 April 2015
I am participating in a MOOC, Teaching statistics through data investigations. A MOOC is a fancy name for an online, free, correspondence course. The letters stand for Massive Open Online Course. I decided to enrol for several reasons. First I am always keen to learn new things. Second, I wanted to experience what it is like to be a student in a MOOC. And third I wanted to see what materials we could produce that might help teachers or learners of statistics in the US. We are doing well in the NZ market, but it isn’t really big enough to […]
19 November 2014
Everyone wants to learn about ordinal data! I have a video channel with about 40 videos about statistics, and I love watching to see which videos are getting the most viewing each day. As the Fall term has recently started in the northern hemisphere, the most popular video over the last month is “Types of Data: Nominal, Ordinal, Interval/Ratio.” Similarly one of the most consistently viewed posts in this blog is one I wrote over a year ago, entitled, “Oh Ordinal Data, what do we do with you?”. Understanding about the different levels of data, and what we do with […]
6 October 2014
Calculus is the wrong summit of the pyramid. “The mathematics curriculum that we have is based on a foundation of arithmetic and algebra. And everything we learn after that is building up towards one subject. And at top of that pyramid, it’s calculus. And I’m here to say that I think that that is the wrong summit of the pyramid … that the correct summit — that all of our students, every high school graduate should know — should be statistics: probability and statistics.” Ted talk by Arthur Benjamin in February 2009. Watch it – it’s only 3 minutes long. […]
1 May 2014
This is a short post, sometimes called e-begging! I had been toying with the idea of a Kickstarter project, as a way for supporters of my work to help us keep going. Kickstarter is a form of crowd-sourcing, which lets a whole lot of people each contribute a little bit to get a project off the ground. But we don’t really have one big project, but rather a stream of videos and web-posts to support the teaching and learning of statistics. Patreon provides a more incremental way for appreciative fans to support the work of content creators. You can see […]
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