Back to School | A Stats+Stories Special Episode by Stats Stories

Remember the pressure of taking a test when the teacher was glaring at you, daring your eyes to roam. Cheating was not a temptation unless your were desperate and willing to risk the everpresent teacher catching you. However, the offering of online classes exploded in recent years. So what happens when you’re testing during online classes that’s the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with guest Dr. Helaine Alessio.

Read More

Proctoring Problems | Stats + Stories Episode 313 by Stats Stories

Remember the pressure of taking a test when the teacher was glaring at you, daring your eyes to roam. Cheating was not a temptation unless your were desperate and willing to risk the everpresent teacher catching you. However, the offering of online classes exploded in recent years. So what happens when you’re testing during online classes that’s the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with guest Dr. Helaine Alessio.

Read More

Skew the Script | Stats + Stories Episode 308 by Stats Stories

Dashiell Young-Saver is a Texas based high school stats teacher. While teaching at a Title 1 school on the southside of San Antonio, Dash threw out his traditional AP Stats curriculum and created lessons on topics his students cared about: voter power, food deserts, the Spurs’s chance at winning the NBA title, online dating, and more. That year, more students at the school took and passed the AP exam than in the previous 16 years combined.  Borrowing from his class motto of “skew the script,” Young-Saver created this website and posted his lessons online for free. Now, he leads Skew The Script’s efforts to provide relevant math lessons to classrooms across the country. 

Read More

CAUSE Lesson Plan Contest | Stats + Stories Episode 297 by Stats Stories

Dr. Dennis Pearl is a Professor of Statistics at Pennsylvania State University and Director of the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education (CAUSE). Dr. Pearl's education work centers on building a national infrastructure to support instructors of statistics, developing resources for instructors in both statistics and probability education, and developing and testing new pedagogical methods.

Megan Mocko is a lecturer who teaches Business Statistics for undergraduate and graduate students. Previously, she taught statistics in the UF Department of Statistics since 2001 and achieved Master Lecturer in 2013. In addition to her teaching, Megan has served as programming chair for the eCOTS (electronic Conference on Teaching of Statistics) 2020 and 2022. Megan’s involvement in the field of statistics education lead to her work as co-chair on the recently updated 2016 GAISE Guidelines report (Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education). Megan has taught introductory statistics in multiple formats: face-to-face, hybrid, and completely online. She has used different techniques to improve learning for students in face to face classes, with learning disabilities and in the online learning environment. She is interested in engaging all students through technology.

Contest Description

This contest is a call for lesson plans that make use of the Stats + Stories podcasts. The lesson plan should include the appropriate materials needed by both students and teachers.

As examples, a good lesson plan might include: instructions for the students to carry out the activity, instructor tips, learning objectives, time to complete the activity, resources needed to complete the activity, recommended course, recommendation for in-class or out-of-class use for the activity, and skills required.

The lesson plan should be accompanied by a grading rubric for any assessment.

Lesson plans should be submitted by January 1, 2024.

Along with cash prizes totaling $1000, the top winners will present their activity in a panel during eCOTS 2024 from May 28th to May 31st and have them posted on CAUSEweb.org and statsandstories.net.

The lesson plans will be judged by a panel of educators. For more information check out CAUSEweb.org

+Full Transcript

Coming Soon


Just a Data Science Bill, Sitting Here on Capital Hill | Stats + Stories Episode 296 by Stats Stories

Donna LaLonde is the Associate Executive Director of the American Statistical Association (ASA) where she works with talented colleagues to advance the vision and mission of the ASA. Prior to joining the ASA in 2015, she was a faculty member at Washburn University where she enjoyed teaching and learning with colleagues and students; she also served in various administrative positions including interim chair of the Education Department and Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs. At the ASA, she supports activities associated with presidential initiatives, accreditation, education, and professional development. She also is a cohost of the Practical Significance podcast which we appeared on in May.

Steve Pierson is the Director of Science Policy for the American Statistics Association. In his role, he works to raise the profile of statistics (the scientific discipline), government statistics, and statisticians nationally. He also advocates on behalf of ASA members and for more engagement of statistics/statisticians and the need to invest in our data infrastructure, as it powers the economy and improves our health and wellbeing. 

Read More

Live From USCOTS 2023 Part 2 | Stats + Stories Episode 289 by Stats Stories

The Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education, aka CAUSE has held the United States Conference on teaching statistics, also known as USCOTS every other year since 2005. This conference enables teachers of statistics to exchange ideas and discover how to improve their teaching. The theme of this year's conference was communicating with and about data, a topic near and dear to us on the Stats and Stories podcast. Two sub-themes are explored as part of this conference, helping students to communicate the process and results of their statistical analysis, and helping teachers to communicate with students in order to develop their understanding of statistical concepts and their ability to implement statistical methods for conversations with leaders and speakers at the United States Conference on teaching statistics were recorded on site. And we are happy to feature these in a collection of episodes of Stats and Stories with guests Kelly Spoon, Amy Hogan and Daniel Kaplan. 

Read More

Live From USCOTS 2023 Part 1 | Stats + Stories Episode 288 by Stats Stories

Kelly McConville is a survey statistician who develops estimation techniques that combine complex survey data with big data sources. Her work is used to estimate official statistics, related to canopy cover or occupational statistics, or to assess the impact of voter ID laws. She enjoys teaching her students how to learn from data and introducing them to R. She also involves her students in her work and co-chairs two national programs: the Undergraduate Statistics Project Competition and the Electronic Undergraduate Statistics Research Conference

Allan Rossman has worked in the Statistics Department at Cal Poly – San Luis Obispo since 2001. His primary classes include introductory statistics to students from throughout the university, and he has also taught courses in probability, simulation, and mathematical statistics.

 

Larry Lesser is a Houston-raised El Paso-based, award-winning educator, researcher, author, and speaker who integrates diverse backgrounds and multiple intersecting identities. For example, his passion for combining music and STEM made its way into his research, grantwriting, teaching, outreach, and service, and about 170 of his published poems and songs are STEM-related.

Episode Description

The Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education, aka CAUSE has held the United States Conference on teaching statistics, also known as USCOTS every other year since 2005. This conference enables teachers of statistics to exchange ideas and discover how to improve their teaching. The theme of this year's conference was communicating with and about data, a topic near and dear to us on the Stats and Stories podcast. Two sub-themes are explored as part of this conference, helping students to communicate the process and results of their statistical analysis, and helping teachers to communicate with students in order to develop their understanding of statistical concepts and their ability to implement statistical methods for conversations with leaders and speakers at the United States Conference on teaching statistics were recorded on site. And we are happy to feature these in a collection of episodes of Stats and Stories.

+Full Transcript

John Bailer
The Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education, aka “CAUSE” has held the United States Conference on teaching statistics, also known as USCOTs or USCOTS, every other year since 2005. This conference enables teachers of statistics to exchange ideas and discover how to improve their teaching. The theme of this year's conference was communicating with and about data, a topic near and dear to us on the stats and stories podcast. Two sub themes are explored as part of this conference, helping students to communicate the process and results of their statistical analysis, and helping teachers to communicate with students in order to develop their understanding of statistical concepts and their ability to implement statistical methods for conversations with leaders and speakers at the United States Conference on teaching statistics were recorded on site. And we are happy to feature these in a collection of episodes of stats and stories, where we explore the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics. I'm John Bailer stats and stories is a production of Miami University's Department of Statistics and media, journalism and film as well as the American Statistical Association. Guess where I am the US Conference on teaching statistics. Some say USCOTS. Some say USCOTS. Alan Rossman will certainly tell me why I did it wrong. I'm joined here by Kelly McConville of Harvard University and Alan Rossman of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. They are the program chairs for the US Conference on teaching statistics 2023 Or as the primitives like me, say us cars. So, thanks. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedules to talk about this wonderful conference.

Alan Rossman
Thanks very much, John. I do prefer to call it uscots. But lots of people call it USCOTS. The people who call it USCOTS. Like the fact that US implies everyone in it together. And that's certainly one of the one of the attitudes and themes and poses we try to strike with us cuts.

John Bailer
So yeah, well, I wonder since I, this is my first time I hate to say this. So should I have called it you cots prior to this as a consequence?

Alan Rossman
No, no. Call it whatever you want. We're just glad you're here.

John Bailer
Absolutely. Well, I'm curious. You two are now the

Alan Rossman program shares, right?

John Bailer
This is this is what what a great thing. And thank you for the effort that you put into it. And for all of us that are able to join you were excited to see the program you put together. You had a theme that you pick this year.

Kelly McConville
Yeah. So our focus this year is on communication. So it feels kind of fun to be on the podcast given the theme. But specifically, it's about communicating with and about data. So thinking about communication, both, you know, extracting knowledge from data and then communicating that in an effective way to stakeholders or peers. But then communicating about data. So understanding difficult concepts like confounding and variation and being able to talk about, about those those difficult ideas.

John Bailer
Yeah, it's it seems that there's a lot of job security and miscommunication just because of so much of quantitative information. It seems like it's misrepresented and misunderstood. It's a very important part of what you do and what you're trying to encourage among the community. So Can Can you talk a little bit about, you know, as you think about this theme, why now, why did that come up is important now for this year in this program?

Alan Rossman
That's a good question. And I think communication is always important. And we haven't addressed that as a theme before. So partly, it was just the time to do it, because we haven't addressed it before. And it's critically important. Another aspect I think, is we try to appeal to a wide variety of types of teachers. We have teachers from two year colleges and four year colleges and research universities, some high school teachers, some graduate students who are thinking about pursuing careers in teaching. So we always try to choose a theme that's going to be relevant to statistics teachers, no matter what situation or environment they're in. And we think communication certainly fits that bill.

Kelly McConville
And maybe I'd add you know, as the data and the models get is messier and more complicated, maybe communication and being able to boil things down into simple terms becomes more difficult, but also just that much more important.

John Bailer
I'm curious as you reflect on your own work and on your on the practice of statistics, and in education and statistics over the last number of years, what have been some of the big changes that that you would note,

Alan Rossman
I've been at it for 35 years. So there have been lots of changes. One is certainly the power of computing and the accessibility of computing, that certainly changed how data is analyzed, that certainly changed how people teach you everything, and certainly how they teach statistics. I think in the last five to 10 years that the the advent of data science is starting to have a huge impact on statistics and on everything else. And I think that's going to be more and more impactful in the coming decade.

Kelly McConville
One thing I'd add to that is multivariate thinking. So I think a lot of introductory statistics courses used to focus on, you know, extracting knowledge from just a single variable or the relationship between two variables. But that's not the world we live in. Right. We live in a very multivariate world. So trying to help students grapple with finding relationships and in many variables and sort of sifting through the noise to find signals in those those multivariate situations.

John Bailer
Okay, so now I want you to put on your prediction hat, you know, so this is where you get to make some incredibly bold prediction of the future of the next big thing in teaching statistics and data science. What might that be?

Kelly McConville
Why that's tough, it is tough. What year was it? Alan, where the theme of us cards was the next big thing?

Alan Rossman
I thought it was 2011, maybe 2013. And that was the theme. And so all the speakers pretty much made their predictions, were they right? Well, the consensus then what consensus is a strong word, but lots of people predicted that simulation based in Prince would be the next big thing. And I think to some degree, they were right. I think simulation based in France has become much more widely used in the classroom in the last decade. And the idea has been around for decades and decades. But I think in the last decade, more and more teachers, even especially if introductory statistics, are using simulation to help students understand basic ideas of statistical inference. So I think to some extent, the folks who predicted that 1012 years ago were on the mark, I think it's harder to make predictions about the future than about the past. It's maybe I'll defer to Kelly for the

Kelly McConville
one actually looking towards the past, but a more recent past. So four years ago, so last time us cats was in person, the theme was around hypothesis testing and p values, right, this was around when the ACA had come out with their statement around key values. And I, I don't think we've radically changed how we teach hypothesis testing, even if that was the theme four years ago. And I wonder if that will, will come to pass in the future, right, more of an emphasis on talking about effect sizes or power, de emphasizing hypothesis tests and emphasizing more estimation and prediction. So maybe that is more of a hope of mine than necessarily what's going to happen. But I think another thing I would mention is just the the increases in modeling, right? Like the number of models out there, but also the widespread disciplines were using much more sophisticated models. And I mean, it's across the spectrum, right. So I think a very classical statistical models like a linear mixed model, I think are more commonplace all the way up to you know, those fancy predictive models like a neural network. And the more these become commonplace in other disciplines, the more I think they're going to need to bleed into our statistics classes earlier and earlier than they currently do so. So I would predict that to be another big thing is to think about how we can get more sophisticated modeling techniques into earlier earlier statistics classes.

John Bailer
Okay, I know I have one, one last sort of two parter question for you both. What is your favorite thing to teach? And what is your least favorite thing to teach? And no, no know, opting out and going back in time? You got it? You got a

Alan Rossman
good question. My favorite thing that I'm almost embarrassed to say this, maybe a statistician shouldn't say this, but my favorite thing to teach is probability. We have a course in Cal Poly that's called Introduction to probability and simulation. So we have students approaching probability from a simulation perspective and from a mathematical perspective, and I really enjoy helping students to look at Questions about randomness from both of those perspectives. They do a good bit of coding as well as doing a good bit of analytical traditional probability analysis. So as I say, I'm somewhat embarrassed to give that answer because probability is a mathematical concept. It's not so much a statistics concept. But that's, that's currently my favorite course to teach. Least favorite is harder, I'll ask tell it to go next.

Kelly McConville
All right, for favorite, I would definitely say it's data wrangling, which is a topic that's pretty new to my classes. But I think it's to me, I drank the Kool Aid. And I'm convinced that we should be teaching introductory students data wrangling because out in the real world, they're not going to see perfectly clean textbook datasets that don't have missing values and have all sensical observations. And so we need to teach them early on how to wrangle their data into a format that actually they can build models build visualizations, do summaries. And so I think it's a lot of fun. And I think it's fun, because there's like a certain subset of students, I think of these as the students who love to have a really tidy room who like dig into data, and get so much joy out of it. And so So yeah, I think for me, that's, that's probably my favorite. I would say, for my least favorite. So, you know, I talked about Kool Aid. One other drink of Kool Aid that I did take was related to the simulation based inference, Alan talked about earlier. So I teach simulation based inference in my intro classes. But I still feel like after that, I have to quickly teach my students about t tests and that sort of thing, because I know they'll be exposed to that and in other disciplines, but feels like this somewhat redundancy. That that I'm just not that excited about. I don't like half to talk about is n greater than 30. That's a silly metric to be checking and that sort of thing. So So yeah, that one gives me not much joy. All right. Now, I'm

John Bailer
hoping you forgot.

Alan Rossman
What I was thinking before you gave your answer about least favorite was pretty similar. Just getting into all the details of procedures. And, and frankly, I tried not to do that so much tried to emphasize the students the general principles and the basic reasoning approach. That's the same across multiple procedures. And like Kelly, I'd spend some time on the details, but I try to minimize time on the boring details.

John Bailer
Well, very good. I mean, I think I echo the same kind of responses. When I think about things that I really enjoy. I like probability to

Alan Rossman slightly less embarrassing

John Bailer
You and I can join together.

Alan Rossman data wrangling sounds more fun, it

John Bailer
was fun to Well, it's been a great pleasure to have Kelly McConville and Alan Rossman join us on stats and short stories, the very special edition where a roving reporter is wandering the halls of a conference center in State College, Pennsylvania to talk about this. Thanks again.


LISA ColLABorations | Stats + Stories Episode 261 by Stats Stories

In many countries in the Global South, partnerships and collaborations are crucial to moving forward projects of various kinds. A network based at the University of Colorado Boulder has facilitated the creation of statistics and data science collaboration labs in 10 countries, The LISA 2020 Global Network and it's efforts are the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with guests Eric Vance and Olawale Awe.

Read More

Data Science Pedagogy | Stats + Stories Episode 253 by Stats Stories

In the past, Introduction to Statistics classes spent a lot of time covering distribution tables, teaching students to run stats by hand and focusing on statistical procedures. However, educators are continually considering new ways to teach stats, and the increasing popularity of data science makes it a more urgent prospect for some. That's the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel.

Read More

The Impact of College Vaccine Mandates | Stats + Stories Episode 244 by Stats Stories

Last academic year colleges and universities across the US struggled with whether to mandate COVID vaccinations for their students. While colleges often require vaccines, the political controversy surrounding the COVID shots made adopting a vaccine policy a complicated undertaking. But according to one study, it had a profound impact on the national COVID death toll last fall. That's the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Riley Acton.

Read More

Signing Statistics | Stats + Stories Episode 239 by Stats Stories

What is a median? How about an interquartile range? Don’t even get me started on how to define a p-value. These statistical concepts are hard to grasp for your average statistics student, but imagining how these types of definitions translate into American Sign Language is a whole other ballgame. That is the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with special guest Dr. Regina Nuzzo.

Read More

Academic Writing for Everyone | Stats + Short Stories Episode 227 by Stats Stories

Rosemary and John both have a passion for teaching. Their experience with classes ranges from mentored studies with a few students, to face-to-face classes with close to 100 students. Recently online classes that might be held synchronously or asynchronously with classes somewhere in between. What if you wanted to offer classes too many more students, who might be based anywhere around the world. Teaching at scale is the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with guest Kristin Sainani.

Read More

In Defense of Standardized Testing | Stats + Stories Episode 224 by Stats Stories

The utility of standardized testing is under debate in the US with opponents of their use in K-12 suggesting educators are now being forced to teach to tests. In higher education, there's been a push to abandon the use of standardized tests in admissions processes. But if we throw out standardized tests completely, are we throwing away a tool that still has some value? That's a question framing this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Howard Wainer.

Read More

Statistician with a CAUSE | Stats + Stories Episode 218 by Stats Stories

One of the regular conversations we have at Stats and Stories is how to improve stats education, both for people who want to be statisticians, as well as for people who need to be able to understand data for their jobs or just to be able to go about their daily lives. The Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education has been working on this issue for the last 20 years. Its work is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Dennis Pearl

Read More

Glass Ceilings in Academia | Stats + Stories Episode 199.5 by Stats Stories

The tenure track process at American universities is a grind – one shaped by the old adage to “Publish or perish.” But if a junior faculty member manages to successfully navigate the process – publishing as expected, learning to manage a classroom, participating in service – then they’re rewarded with tenure. Tenure is an almost permanent employment relationship at universities that’s designed to give faculty the freedom – because of their job security to pursue any area of inquiry they feel drawn to. The problem, of course, is that not everyone makes it through that grind. A growing body of research shows that women, though they receive more than 50-percent of all PhDs, are not making it through the tenure track process in the same numbers. That’s the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guests Michelle Cardel and Leslie McClure.

Read More

STATCOM | Stats + Stories Episode 191 by Stats Stories

Where are the best locations for food pantries? What are the patterns and use of a crisis call center? How can services be improved for the senior population of Wahtenaw County in Michigan? These questions share a common denominator, they represent data and analysis needs of community service organizations. Statistics in the service of the community is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guests. Emily Morris and Tom Braun.

Read More

The Impact of Remote Learning | Stats + Stories Episode 188 by Stats Stories

Parents, educators, and activists have all raised concerns about the impact of COVID on the educational experience of students. For high school students, these issues are amplified as they consider graduation and what may come after. The impact of COVID on high school grades is a focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Harrison Schramm.

Read More