Statisticians and Statistics teachers often have to push back against the popular impression that Statistics teaches how to lie with data. Those who believe incorrectly that Statistics is a branch of Mathematics (and thus algorithmic) often see the use of judgment in Statistics as evidence that we do indeed manipulate our results.

In the push to teach formulas and definitions, we may fail to emphasize to students the important role played by judgment. We should teach our students that they are personally responsible for the judgments they make. But we must also offer guidance for their statistical judgments. The principle guiding these judgments should be the honest search for truth about the world, and the principle of seeking such truth should have a central place in Statistics courses.

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Paul Velleman has an international reputation for innovative Statistics education. He is the author and designer of the multimedia statistics CD-ROM, ActivStats, for which he was awarded the EDUCOM Medal for innovative uses of computer in teaching statistics, and the ICTCM Award for Innovation in Using Technology in College Mathematics. He also developed the statistics program, Data Desk and the Internet site Data and Story Library (DASL) (lib.stat.cmu.edu/DASL/), which provides datasets for teaching statistics.

He is co-author (with Richard De Veaux and David Bock) of the books ABCs of Exploratory Data Analysis (with David Hoaglin), Intro Stats, Stats: Modeling the World, and Stats: Data and Models.

Paul has taught Statistics at Cornell University since 1975. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.