A Project-Based Approach to Statistics and Data Science

Abstract

In an increasingly data-driven world, facility with statistics is more important than ever for our students. At institutions without a statistician, it often falls to the mathematics faculty to teach statistics courses. This paper presents a model that a mathematician asked to teach statistics can follow. This model entails connecting with faculty from numerous departments on campus to develop a list of topics, building a repository of real-world datasets from these faculty, and creating projects where students interface with these datasets to write lab reports aimed at consumers of statistics in other disciplines. The end result is students who are well prepared for interdisciplinary research, who are accustomed to coping with the idiosyncrasies of real data, and who have sharpened their technical writing and speaking skills.

5Ws AND 1H OF TERM PROJECTS IN THE INTRODUCTORY DATA SCIENCE CLASSROOM

“…When working on projects, students are often inspired to learn more (Lazar et al, 2011). Many institutions who perform projects like these are "blown away" by the level and quality of the final submissions with some students going above and beyond by submitting papers to undergraduate journals (White, 2019). Students such as these can choose to publicly share their projects and build their data science portfolio in preparation for future interviews.…”

Learning data science methods through a mobile device and full body motion data

“…Universities have responded to this demand by establishing schools, degree programs, and courses for data science to strengthen students’ competitiveness in the job market (Fayyad & Hamutcu, 2021). Yet, while many undergraduate students recognize the importance of data science, many of them are reluctant to take the pertinent courses because they find difficulties in statistics, mathematics, and/or programming (He et al, 2019; White, 2019). Instructors also have their own challenges.…”