Skip to main content

How I Teach Statistics

How an instructor can integrate the examples from this blog is determined, in part, by the environment in which they teach. To better understand where I am coming from and how I teach, here is some information on the settings in which I teach statistics, as well as some information on my personal orientation towards teaching statistics. 

When I teach on-campus statistics:

I transitioned from using SPSS to using JASP  for student data analysis. For the purposes of my class, JASP contains every analysis my students learn (and then some). I think it is easier to access effect sizes in JASP than it is in SPSS. And many of my students downloaded JASP onto their own laptops, so not only are they learning how to use JASP in my class, they now have access to JASP in the future. 

My class is listed as Psychological Statistics and meets the requirements for an introductory statistics course at my university.

I teach two sections of this class every Fall and Spring.

I also teach Honors Psychological statistics. This class is capped at 15 and limited to students in Gannon University's Honors program. The format is similar, but we have in-depth discussion days related to ethical issues surrounding data, data collection, and science reporting in modern life.

When I teach online statistics:

My students are traditional Gannon students who elect to take my course online. 

They also use JASP for their data analyses.

The class is seven weeks long (same material as my on-campus class but in half the time. Yes, this does make the course more challenging for my students).

Another way in which this class differs significantly is through the use of weekly discussion boards based on readings from popular magazines and web sites.

I teach this class every Spring, Summer, and Fall semester.

More on how I teach:

Check out my contribution to the Society for the Teaching of Psychology's STP, "This is how I teach." series. I also wrote a chapter in the STP publication For the Love of Teaching Undergraduate Statistics.

Here is an invited blog post I wrote for STP's Graduate Student Teaching Association, entitled Ph.D. Goggles: Very few of your students are getting their PhDs. Stop teaching stats like they are.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ways to use funny meme scales in your stats classes

Have you ever heard of the theory that there are multiple people worldwide thinking about the same novel thing at the same time? It is the multiple discovery hypothesis of invention . Like, multiple great minds around the world were working on calculus at the same time. Well, I think a bunch of super-duper psychology professors were all thinking about scale memes and pedagogy at the same time. Clearly, this is just as impressive as calculus. Who were some of these great minds? 1) Dr.  Molly Metz maintains a curated list of hilarious "How you doing?" scales.  2) Dr. Esther Lindenström posted about using these scales as student check-ins. 3) I was working on a blog post about using such scales to teach the basics of variables.  So, I decided to create a post about three ways to use these scales in your stats classes:  1) Teaching the basics of variables. 2) Nominal vs. ordinal scales.  3) Daily check-in with your students.  1. Teach your students the basics...

Leo DiCaprio Romantic Age Gap Data: UPDATE

Does anyone else teach correlation and regression together at the end of the semester? Here is a treat for you: Updated data on Leonardo DiCaprio, his age, and his romantic partner's age when they started dating. A few years ago, there was a dust-up when a clever Redditor r/TrustLittleBrother realized that DiCaprio had never dated anyone over 25. I blogged about this when it happened. But the old data was from 2022. Inspired by this sleuthing,  I created a wee data set, including up-to-date information on his current relationship with Vittoria Ceretti, so your students can suss out the patterns that exist in this data.

If your students get the joke, they get statistics.

Gleaned from multiple sources (FB, Pinterest, Twitter, none of these belong to me, etc.). Remember, if your students can explain why a stats funny is funny, they are demonstrating statistical knowledge. I like to ask students to explain the humor in such examples for extra credit points (see below for an example from my FA14 final exam). Using xkcd.com for bonus points/assessing if students understand that correlation =/= causation What are the numerical thresholds for probability?  How does this refer to alpha? What type of error is being described, Type I or Type II? What measure of central tendency is being described? Dilbert: http://search.dilbert.com/comic/Kill%20Anyone Sampling, CLT http://foulmouthedbaker.com/2013/10/03/graphs-belong-on-cakes/ Because control vs. sample, standard deviations, normal curves. Also,"skewed" pun. If you go to the original website , the story behind this cakes has to do w...