TIES 2018 Short Course on Beyond Calculations: Teaching Statistical Thinking
Presenter - E. Ashley Steel - asteel@fs.fed.us; asteel.usfs@gmail.com
Peter Guttorp - guttorp@uw.edu
Martin Liermann - martin.liermann@noaa.gov
Description
To improve the application of statistics within the scientific process, we developed a course for senior undergraduates in Statistics and early graduate students from any science discipline. The course serves as a bridge between learning and applying statistical tools; it focuses on statistical thinking within an expanded domain of statistics that includes not only calculations but also the beginning of the scientific process, e.g. asking a clear question and tying it correctly to analytical methods, and the end of the scientific process, e.g. communicating results to the general public. In this 2-hour workshop, we share the successes and challenges of our course as well as slides, in-class activities, and r-labs to help others develop similar courses or enrich existing ones.
3:30 - 3:45 Introductions and introduction to the short course
3:45 - 4:00 Why are some statistical errors so common: The wiring of the human brain
4:00 - 4:15 Hands-on activity: Exploring infant mortality in the USA
4:15 - 4:30 From sampling distributions to bootstrapped confidence intervals
4:30 - 4:50 Hands-on activity: Permutation tests
4:50 - 5:10 Publish, perish and p-values: Teaching about p-values
5:10 - 5:20 Making final student projects successful
5:20 - 5:30 Statistical best practices (based on course) and Wrap-Up
Course resources to be made available on-line
- Slides for teaching about the wiring of the human brain
- Teaching Activity Guide: Thinking about kidney cancer - hands-on with associated R lab
- Teaching Activity Guide: The Fame Game - teaching about the life-cycle of science
- Teaching Activity Guide: Permutation tests - hands-on with associated R lab
- R Lab: P-Value experiments
- Statistical Best Practices (based on course)