Teaching the BIG IDEAS of Statistics in
the Introductory Course
Christine Franklin
University of Georgia
Department of Statistics
Teaching: Developing Future
Minds
Always Learning as a Teacher
The New Generation of
Student
Priorities of Teaching
As the professor of the class,
constantly demonstrate your
passion for the area of statistics
and why the content is
important in the students’ lives
Sense of Classroom
Community
Priorities of Teaching
Use different pedagogy in the
class
Group and discovery work
Help students build friendships
within the class and make
students accountable to each
other
Teaching the Content
Teaching the Content
Especially for the intro courses, I
firmly believe in teaching the BIG
PICTURE of the BIG IDEAS and
CONCEPTS, not a laundry list of
disjointed topics
Teach what you want students to
remember 6 months from when
they complete the course
A Recent Study
Survey of more than 2300
undergraduates found 45% show
no significant improvement in
the key measures of critical
thinking, complex reasoning and
writing by the end of their
sophomore years.
Teaching Statistics
The big picture of statistical reasoning
Communication skills (writing and oral)
Critical Thinking Skills
When students read a media item, what
are the important questions to ask in
assessing the statistical content?
Asking the Right Questions
Big Picture – Statistical
Investigative Process
Statistical question
How to design a study to collect data
Analyze data – this includes exploring the data
understanding key concepts like a sampling
distribution and P-values and margin of errors
What are appropriate conclusions to make
from the study based on the type of study
conducted
Chalk Talk
Discrimination Study
48 male bank supervisors were each given the same
personnel file and asked to judge whether the person
should be promoted to a branch manager job that was
described as “routine’ or whether the person’s file
should be held and other applicants interviewed. The
files were identical except that half of the supervisors
had files showing the person was male while the other
half had files showing the person was female. Of the 48
files reviewed, 35 were promoted.
Preliminary Questions
What is the statistical question?
What type of study design was used by
the researchers? Experiment or
observational study?
Ideally, how should the researcher
distribute the files? What is the role of
randomization?
Preliminary Questions
If no discrimination, expected number of males out of
35 promoted? Expected number of females?
What do you believe would provide strong evidence of
discrimination against women? How many males
promoted?
What if evidence falls into a ‘gray area’- not clearly
obvious? How many males promoted?
Results of actual study: 21 males promoted – the gray
area
Simulate the study using the
assumption of a random model
Use a deck of 48 cards – the 24 black cards are males,
24 red cards are females
Shuffle the deck well and deal out 35 cards. Count the
number of black cards out of 35. Record the summary
statistic for thus simulated study.
Repeat the process above 19 more times.
Create a dotplot of the 20 summary statistics (counts).
Using Simulated Sampling
Distribution
Create a simulated class sampling distribution with
close to 1000 simulated counts.
Explore using descriptive statistics – graphs and
numerical summaries
Discuss what is the null and alternative hypothesis
Find a simulated P-value
Talk about statistical significance
Discuss Type I and II error and potential consequences
Re-enforce the Big Ideas
Define your Big Ideas for the course
and teach these concepts as a unified
content throughout the course not as
disjointed topics
Never let the student lose sight of the
Statistical Investigative Process as
you throughout the course add new
tools to the student’s tool box