Teaching Statistics: Am I the Lone Dinosaur?

Abstract

Teaching statistics in a social science department can be a daunting task for the new or part-time faculty member. Students have a wide range of abilities, aptitudes, interests, and motivation levels. Of course, as we all know, many social science students fear statistics. Approximately 80% of the graduate students experience statistics anxiety.1 Although this anxiety might hinder performance, many survive the course. What I find interesting is that some of these students may go on to teach undergraduate statistics courses as part of their graduate teaching duties. Therefore, teaching statistics certainly can alleviate anxiety as one is forced to know the material well and convey it in a cogent way to undergraduates.If graduate students fear statistics courses, then it is highly probable that the undergraduates fear statistics as well, if not more so. These anxieties may include fear of asking questions, having difficulty in providing conclusions from the data, and perhaps being intimidated by the faculty member given the topic and knowledge base.2 The mathematics in this course is fairly simple, yet the concepts may be somewhat abstract. Hence, how does one make an abstract concept easy to digest? Perhaps one way is to provide a real-life example.3 For example, in my discussion of the Central Limit Theorem, I will explain how the sampling distribution of the mean approaches normality when sample size increases. From a more humorous real-life perspective, I will explain how a supermodel who stands six feet tall and weighs 110 pounds can eat candy bars and milk shakes (which would be akin to sample size) to become more "normal". Not only is this a real-life example that many of us can relate to, but also there is humor. This can be one way to make statistics come alive.There are almost as many ways to teach statistics as there are statistics professors. For example, in our psychology department, there are three tenured faculty members who teach the majority of the undergraduate sections. One faculty member uses the eyeball estimation method, which is certainly novel. A second professor uses SPSS in her course, which is quite laudable. My approach has been to have students calculate problems by hand. These problems include z-scores, confidence intervals, ANOVA, subsequent tests to ANOVA including range tests, and correlation. However, my philosophy starts on the first day of class in which I explain that statistics is simply telling a story with numbers. Moreover, this story becomes more complete based on advanced testing, if appropriate. These stories transcend disciplines. Although the majority of students are in psychology, there are some in hotel administration, biology, nursing, anthropology, and kinesiology, just to name a few. In order to make statistics relevant for these students, I will provide salient problems that could be of great interest ranging from testing different types of drugs for reduction of Ebola or Zika Virus symptomatology to discussing differences among hotels on the Strip with regard to...