Topics for a new intro stats

A plan for work

I propose to divide our work into two phases:

  1. Finding words
  2. Prioritizing/exemplifying

Topic list

  • data organization
  • wrangling
  • graphics
  • communicating about uncertainty
  • confounding
  • causality
  • decision making
  • false discovery
  • research design
  • detection theory (e.g. sensitivity, …)
  • imperfect experiment
  • Bayes

Phase I: Finding words

  1. Divide into groups of three and follow the work cycle outlined below. (15 minutes)
  2. Divide into new groups of three (no overlap!) and again follow the work cycle. (15 minutes)
  3. And again ….

In the end, each participant will have worked on three topics.

Work cycle for a group of three:

  1. Designate a note taker (the job will be easy)
  2. Each group should pick one topic from the list above. The topic selected should be different from any topic any group-member has discussed in previous cycles.
  3. Discuss the topic to produce a list of 25 to 50 meaningful phrases suggesting what a well educated person (your student? your doctor? a legislator?) should know about the topic.
    • The notetaker will put these into the Phase-I.Rmd document.
    • Keep each phrase concise: no more than 3 words, and usually 1 or 2.
    • One line per phrase
    • If you want to indicate importance, use stars: * or ** or *** (or none). This isn’t binding, just an aid to initial navigation in Phase II.
  4. You’re encouraged to keep explanatory notes in another document (which you might use in Phase II).
  5. Copy-and-paste the lines with the words/phrases into this Google Form.
  6. Remind Danny that the spreadsheet containing the submissions in (5) ought to be displayed on the screen while people work.

Phase II: Prioritizing and elaborating

We’ll construct groups of 2 to 4 participants who have a common interest in a specific topic. (There can be more than one group about a topic, but let’s try for some spread.)

  1. In your RStudio.cloud project, open the Phase-II.Rmd document.
  2. Collect all the words about the topic from Phase I.
    • Instructions for doing this are contained in the Phase-II.Rmd document.
    • The word/phrase list from (2) will be sorted in descending order by stars.
  3. Re-arrange the word list as you think appropriate to construct a syllabus for an approximately one-week module on the topic.
    • You might have to add new words to fill in gaps.
    • Write a brief elaboration on what each word/phrase stands for and what other words it is connected to. Feel free to draw a diagram (then photograph it, upload it, and include it in your Rmd document.) Insofar as you can, be specific about what examples you might want to use, e.g. news stories, research articles, data sets, activities.
  4. Indicate with + symbols next to each word/phrase the importance you currently place on it in your present introductory statistics course.
  5. Save the document in your RStudio project. Also, send an email to Danny giving a link to your RStudio project so that he can find your document.