Title:      Going beyond the book:  Toward critical reading in
statistics teaching

Authors:    Andrew Gelman

Entrydate:  2008-06-01 20:56:18

Keywords:   categorical and continuous variables, handedness,
menstruation, primary sources, secondary sources, sex ratio,
teaching, textbooks, traffic accidents

Abstract:   We can improve our teaching of statistical examples
from books by collecting further data, reading cited articles,
and performing further data analysis. This should not come as a
surprise, but what might be new is the realization of how close
to the surface these research opportunities are: even
influential and celebrated books can have examples where more
can be learned with a small amount of additional effort.

We discuss three examples that have arisen in our own teaching:
an introductory textbook that motivated us to think more
carefully about categorical and continuous variables; a book for
the lay reader that misreported a study of menstruation and
accidents; and a monograph on the foundations of probability
that overinterpreted statistically insignificant fluctuations in
sex ratios.

http://polmeth.wustl.edu/retrieve.php?id=752

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