A Probability/Activity Approach for Teaching Introductory Statistics

本提案解决的问题是如何更有效地教授本科统计学入门课程。传统的讲课和作业形式的统计学教学不利于学习。此外，很难传达抽样分布，区间估计和假设检验的基本经典概念。本项目将为一门新的“概率/活动”统计课程编写教材。本课程将采用研讨会的形式进行教学，学生将通过指导活动学习数据分析、概率和推理材料。本课程的推理内容将使用贝叶斯观点来教授。将编写一本教科书，其中包含学习概率和基本推理概念的课堂和家庭作业活动的集合。此外，还将编写一份教师手册，对重要概念进行描述，并就如何鼓励课堂上的合作学习提出建议。这门新的统计学课程的有效性将通过学生在统计基本概念知识测试中的表现和学生对统计学科的总体态度来评估。这门新的统计学课程将与传统课程进行比较，以衡量课程在达到特定成就目标方面的成功程度。

The problem addressed by this proposal is how to teach an introductory undergraduate statistics course more effectively. The traditional lecture and homework format of teaching statistics are not conducive to learning. In addition, it is hard to communicate the basic classical concepts of sampling distributions, interval estimation, and hypothesis testing. This project will develop curriculum materials for a new "probability/activity" statistics course. This class would be taught using a workshop format in which the students learn data analysis, probability, and inference material by means of directed activities. The inferential content of the class will be taught using a Bayesian perspective. A textbook will be written that contains a collection of classroom and homework activities for learning concepts of probability and elementary inference. In addition, an instructor's manual will be developed that gives a description of the important concepts and advice on how to encourage the collaborative learning in the classroom. The effectiveness of this new statistics class will be assessed by the performance of the students on tests measuring knowledge of basic concepts in statistics and the general attitude of the students about the discipline of statistics. This new statistics class will be compared with the traditional class with respect to the success of the course in reaching particular achievement goals.