5 ms·

I wonder if we aren't going about this a bit wrong. As much as I love learning about the nuts and bolts of statistics, would the general populace not be better

I wonder if we aren't going about this a bit wrong. As much as I love learning about the nuts and bolts of statistics, would the general populace not be better of learning the basics of why (experiment design, independence, covariance, etc) and then the basics of how augmented with tools like probability toolkits that do the math for you? Because, honestly, the math in statistics can be boring and error prone. I'd much rather a population capable of setting up experiments and using the right abstractions and then using a calculator for it. And as much as I want to strive for greater mathematical literacy, perhaps that should be sought independently elsewhere. Diving too deep into the math might impede understanding of statistics. Of course, I don't know where or how you draw the line on who should be taught what... I'd also tend towards Bayesian approaches too (p-hacking - or equivalents-;is of course still possible, but there are presentations of results (i.e., probability distributions of a result value) which make hacking to an arbitrary value less tempting) which does tend to have a bit more complicated math past the first introduction.

grawprog 7y ago
>be better of learning the basics of why (experiment design, independence, covariance, etc) and then the basics of how augmented with tools like probability toolkits that do the math for you? This is how I learned statistics the first time. We started with experimental design and sampling and built up from that. By the time we'd actually started getting to the actual math and statistics we already had a pretty firm grasp of the principles behind what we were doing and why. The math itself by the time we started learning it really wasn't too bad, then we moved onto using R for stastics. I ended up having to take a second stastics course afterwards, the teacher taught it differently. There were people in my class that hadn't been through the other course. They struggled horribly with it. The material wasn't any more difficult, it was mostly the same material we'd been taught before(my degree was odd, I ended up having to take a few redundant, repeat classes to satisfy credit requirements). The teaching method made a huge difference, I even found some of the second course confusing despite it covering almost the same stuff.
xouse 7y ago
I've heard of experimental classes before, where instead of a normal grading rubric that includes tests and homework and grades out of 100%, you effectively start at 0% and you do rpg like quests/tasks to gain experience points and "level up" to your final grade. I think if one has a statistics class that's aimed at giving people better statistics literacy it would be a remarkably good fit for a gamified interactive curriculum using an in class currency to make bets/predictions! You could earn currency the same way you do in games, completing mundane tasks you really don't want to do, like having every homework problem you successfully complete give you a few gold. This incentivizes studying and the effort adds some real emotional value to the currency you wager later. You could have a whole final fantasy style rpg underlayer where currency is used to buy armor/weapons to make you stronger and help you fight bigger monsters for more currency and advancing in the "game" with the ultimate goal of amassing enough currency through your activities to "buy" your A in the class or whatever. Then you could have the meat of the class be in lecture scenarios where everyone is presented with a situation that's implicitly meant to test your knowledge of a common gotcha in statistical literacy like base rate neglect in a live statistical simulation. You get to watch as your characters are subjected to "rolls" of the dice that determine their fate based on if you chose A or B. Do you believe the wizard with the diagnosing spell with a x rate of false positive/negative who says you have disease such and such with a y incidence rate? It's just the basic base rate neglect fallacy scenario, but putting people in a situation where they're incentivized to care about it and rewarded for getting it right. And by doing these simulations live in class it makes for a lot of spectacle and fun with everyone getting to gamble on these scenarios and then get to see the results play out in real time with all the suspense that gambling normally entails. You could even have group scenarios where the entire class has to pick option a or b as a whole with everyone's money collectively on the line, and have a heated discussion period where different parties are trying to explain why the class should choose a or b. Imagine being the sole voice of reason trying to valiantly explain to your class how base rate neglect works with everything on the line! This just seems like such a natural fit to me, and I'm really excited thinking about it.
- eximius 7y ago
  I thought I'd be onboard from the first paragraph but then you took a hard turn into gamification. That seems like entirely too much overhead for a topic that already doesn't have enough time to teach the fundamentals properly. Not to mention that, at some point, you hit a wall of severe diminishing returns on promoting interest through gamification without enormous payoffs. People will either be engaged with the material or they won't. Your class/their grade is simply not high enough stakes for someone not interested in the material to slog through with that extra effort. What would happen is a couple folks who would have already been motivated will suggest their answer and the rest of the room will follow one of them. I like the 'pick and choose'-additive model you mentioned. It builds in extra credit along the way, too. 12 weekly assignments worth 5 pts apiece (say 1 question, 1 pt, they can be longer questions), 3 exams worth 20 points each. Of course, that is merely making explicit a fairly normal system where you just don't know the assignment counts or weights beforehand. But you could adjust it so that, instead of 12 homeworks, you can do a handful of projects that require deeper understanding. For people uninterested, just getting their credit, they can slog through the simple homework. For those motivated to learn the material more deeply, they can do the harder, deeper work (that hopefully takes less overall time - no need to punish them).

grawprog 7y ago

>be better of learning the basics of why (experiment design, independence, covariance, etc) and then the basics of how augmented with tools like probability toolkits that do the math for you? This is how I learned statistics the first time. We started with experimental design and sampling and built up from that. By the time we'd actually started getting to the actual math and statistics we already had a pretty firm grasp of the principles behind what we were doing and why. The math itself by the time we started learning it really wasn't too bad, then we moved onto using R for stastics. I ended up having to take a second stastics course afterwards, the teacher taught it differently. There were people in my class that hadn't been through the other course. They struggled horribly with it. The material wasn't any more difficult, it was mostly the same material we'd been taught before(my degree was odd, I ended up having to take a few redundant, repeat classes to satisfy credit requirements). The teaching method made a huge difference, I even found some of the second course confusing despite it covering almost the same stuff.

xouse 7y ago

I've heard of experimental classes before, where instead of a normal grading rubric that includes tests and homework and grades out of 100%, you effectively start at 0% and you do rpg like quests/tasks to gain experience points and "level up" to your final grade. I think if one has a statistics class that's aimed at giving people better statistics literacy it would be a remarkably good fit for a gamified interactive curriculum using an in class currency to make bets/predictions! You could earn currency the same way you do in games, completing mundane tasks you really don't want to do, like having every homework problem you successfully complete give you a few gold. This incentivizes studying and the effort adds some real emotional value to the currency you wager later. You could have a whole final fantasy style rpg underlayer where currency is used to buy armor/weapons to make you stronger and help you fight bigger monsters for more currency and advancing in the "game" with the ultimate goal of amassing enough currency through your activities to "buy" your A in the class or whatever. Then you could have the meat of the class be in lecture scenarios where everyone is presented with a situation that's implicitly meant to test your knowledge of a common gotcha in statistical literacy like base rate neglect in a live statistical simulation. You get to watch as your characters are subjected to "rolls" of the dice that determine their fate based on if you chose A or B. Do you believe the wizard with the diagnosing spell with a x rate of false positive/negative who says you have disease such and such with a y incidence rate? It's just the basic base rate neglect fallacy scenario, but putting people in a situation where they're incentivized to care about it and rewarded for getting it right. And by doing these simulations live in class it makes for a lot of spectacle and fun with everyone getting to gamble on these scenarios and then get to see the results play out in real time with all the suspense that gambling normally entails. You could even have group scenarios where the entire class has to pick option a or b as a whole with everyone's money collectively on the line, and have a heated discussion period where different parties are trying to explain why the class should choose a or b. Imagine being the sole voice of reason trying to valiantly explain to your class how base rate neglect works with everything on the line! This just seems like such a natural fit to me, and I'm really excited thinking about it.

eximius 7y ago
I thought I'd be onboard from the first paragraph but then you took a hard turn into gamification. That seems like entirely too much overhead for a topic that already doesn't have enough time to teach the fundamentals properly. Not to mention that, at some point, you hit a wall of severe diminishing returns on promoting interest through gamification without enormous payoffs. People will either be engaged with the material or they won't. Your class/their grade is simply not high enough stakes for someone not interested in the material to slog through with that extra effort. What would happen is a couple folks who would have already been motivated will suggest their answer and the rest of the room will follow one of them. I like the 'pick and choose'-additive model you mentioned. It builds in extra credit along the way, too. 12 weekly assignments worth 5 pts apiece (say 1 question, 1 pt, they can be longer questions), 3 exams worth 20 points each. Of course, that is merely making explicit a fairly normal system where you just don't know the assignment counts or weights beforehand. But you could adjust it so that, instead of 12 homeworks, you can do a handful of projects that require deeper understanding. For people uninterested, just getting their credit, they can slog through the simple homework. For those motivated to learn the material more deeply, they can do the harder, deeper work (that hopefully takes less overall time - no need to punish them).