I'm thinking about offering a pre-statistics class, sort of a statistics appreciation "you can do this" class for our majors. I want to aim it toward our more math-phobic students. I imagine that in between practicing basic algebra and summation notation I'll have guest lecturers from around our department come in and tell them how they use statistics in their own disciplines.
I don't know anything about teaching math phobics. Do any of you have any suggestions? Textbooks, teaching exercises, similar courses? Is it too much to expect that at the end of the quarter the kids would have generated a "portfolio" containing what they'll need for statistics?
Am I insane to think of doing something like this?
Sunday, May 29, 2005
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17 comments:
I don't know anything, but...
I'd be inclined to steer (mostly) clear of the algebra and notation, and give them reasons to get excited about stats. Of course, some notation would enter in in the course of presenting fun stories, but it should be a side effect, rather than a purpose, of a pre-statistics course.
Notation and mastery (hah!) of symbols can come from the stats course itself; I would think the ideal outcome of the pre- class would be to get them interested enough to pay attention in the real thing.
Statistics makes it easy to distinguish between interesting reports and steaming piles of manure, so there should be plenty of interesting examples to get them going.
I don't think you're insane, but I think you'll get better results if you tighten the focus. And my hunch is that motivation is a more useful focus than mechanics.
I thought I was math phobic, because that was what was expected.
I now know I missed out, and find math stuff quite fun. It would have been nice had someone come along and informed me that math wasn't the worst thing since stubbing your toe in the morning, then a few weeks later thinking it was unstubbed, only to re-stub it.
As far as making people not math phobic, it was my interets in physics that did it for me... which I guess doesn't really help... BUT I think the idea is a good one.
Along the lines of focusing on motivation, perhaps a book such as Innumeracy (or A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper) by John Allen Paulos would be a useful way to structure/frame a pre-stats course? I had a stats prof (David Koceja at Indiana University) who explained basic statistical concepts using very basic math so that students who were math phobic could get excited about the underlying concepts rather than stuck on the math. Once the concepts were grasped with simple math, then homework assignments gradually ramped up the complexity of the mathematics required. We also laughed a lot in that class and I tend to learn best when I'm having fun. Good luck, I think it's a great idea!
Here are some assorted suggestions from an ex-math phobic undergraduate:
Make sure you are focusing more on the overall concepts than the equations. Students who are not math people care less about how the equation works than when to use which equation.
Don't assume that a student knows how to do it until s/he can prove it. I had a mechanics professor that would literally play b.s. with me during office hours until I learned to quit acting like I was smart and ask real questions. As much as students hate to be singled out, if you threaten to put people on the spot, they are more likely to pay attention.
It really helps to explain a concept in at least two different ways. The big problem I have found with math teachers and tutors is that they are most often people who are quite good at math and concepts tend to come easily to them. So when they attempt to explain it to someone who doesn't "get it" the first time, they don't understand why and don't know what to do. Explaining things several ways will appeal to several ways of thinking.
Of course the best suggestions come from people who are terrible at math but have figured it out anyway. If you know of a student or teacher like this, you could ask them for help on explaining specific troubling concepts. Sorry I don't know of any texts that would help, the one I used for intro to stats was terrible.
I can recommend books by David Berlinsky for interesting and humanities-friendly analyses of mathematical concepts.
I wish I could take the course once you design it. Sigh.
I'd recommend How to Lie With Statistics, though your students might find it a bit hookey.
The class sounds like a great idea (imho)!
Have you looked at the Chance website (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/)? It sounds like there might be some overlap in the goals of the Chance courses and the goals for your proposed class. At the very least, there might be some fun elements that you could tweak for your class.
Good luck!
If you're looking for practical applications of statistics, I'd recommend talking to your local ecologists, evolutionary biologists, or ecological physiologists. Biology is full of real-world situations where statistics are required to help interpret data (e.g., the 8 plants in that treatment grew, on average, at 1.1x the rate of those other 8 plants; is that a significant difference?)
My biology majors typically have very little math background, but by the end of the semester I have them running T-tests, ANOVAs, and chi-square tests, all in the context of analyzing data they collected in lab. I don't go into any of the mechanics of the tests; we just let Excel, and various websites, do the work.
So maybe a very practical approach (focusing the class on data collection and then discussing the methods for analyzing the data) might help? Or maybe what I'm thinking of as a pre-statistics class is way off base ...
I really enjoyed a series of seminars we were given as new research students, which involved poor uses of statistics in the media...we were asked to work in groups to figure out why the statistics were wrong, or misguided, and then were told the correct way of analyzing them.
I'd be very careful in using Berlinski's work, since he is an apologist for both creationism and astrology.
You can find many examples of his hackery at pandasthumb.org.
If you do this, this children's book is worth passing around on the first day:
Math Curse, by Jon Scieszka & Lane Smith
A very cute little book on overcoming math phobia.
Good luck!
You've probably already thought of this, but statistics is one area where "problem based learning" should be fantastically effective. You could have them work through some problems using US census data (freely available and quite complex) or crosscheck media and pundit uses of numbers and trends, etc....
I should have said I don't recommend any of Berlinski's non-maths work, but his A Tour of the Calculus is an exceptional, approachable book.
On a different topic, here's a query posted to the University of Cambridge graduate union. I weep for the future:
"I am a self-funded (i.e. my own earnings) student, recently accepted by Trinity. I have never been to Cambridge before, but I thought it would be a great diversion prior to commencing my career (which is firm and guaranteed).
Unfortunately, at my previous program, which was at an Ivy League U.S. university, there were many students "on financial aid" or receiving "full" scholarships. This was particularly the case in the graduate program which boasted the presence of a lot of international students. I have come to believe that such students, funded by charity, do not share the same determination in having a degree that is pragmatic or, if the degree is by its nature pragmatic, prefer to add liberal ideological accretions to the degree, thus reducing its worth [after all, they haven't paid for it].
Given my previous experience with these students (who tend to be loud, particularly when their vocal chords are funded by money from others), I prefer not to have a lot to do with such people during my prospective studies at Cambridge.
In short, as someone who has the resources to pay my full way, I resent financially needy students speaking for me in student government or, frankly, associating with me at all. Are there exclusive clubs/societies at Cambridge I can join?"
Given my previous experience with these students (who tend to be loud, particularly when their vocal chords are funded by money from others), I prefer not to have a lot to do with such people during my prospective studies at Cambridge.
Oh. My. God.
Thanks, Everyone, for your great suggestions. I am awaiting delivery of A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper from the library, and I'm also reading Sheila Tobias's Succeed With Math. I just finished reading Freakonomics, and that gave me some ideas too.
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