Some of you are familiar with Project MOSAIC and, particularly, the mosaic package for R. This note is directed to you.
We've been asked to collect some comments from instructors about their use of the mosaic package. So, if you've used it could you send back a couple of sentences saying:
1) How you used it. (e.g. in teaching)
2) Whether it's worked well for you and your students.
3) Whether it changed the way you teach statistics or use computing in teaching statistics.
4) Your general impression (if any) of whether the mosaic package and Project MOSAIC itself has been useful to the statistics education community.
5) Whatever else you think is relevant.
We will use your comments, without attribution (unless you request otherwise), in a grant agency report about Project MOSAIC. That report will also have non-anecdotal information, but we were asked particularly to have people say things in their own words.
We face a deadline, so if you can respond to kaplan(a)macalester.edu today , tomorrow , or Saturday , that will be very helpful for us.
Thanks,
Danny Kaplan
Greetings,
My name is Jason Dolor, and I am a doctoral student at Portland State University. I am conducting a study on the understanding of concepts related to statistical inference for my doctoral dissertation. I was hoping you could help in my data collection process by forwarding this e-mail to your Graduate Teaching Assistants in your mathematics/statistics department.
The purpose of my research is to investigate current and future teachers’ understanding of concepts related to hypothesis testing. The research study hopes to better understand the knowledge of teachers of statistics with potential benefits towards improving professional development programs. One of the populations that I plan to study is Graduate Teaching Assistants in Mathematics and Statistics programs at various universities in the United States who are currently teaching or could potentially teach introductory statistics courses.
Below is a link to an online survey tool through the Qualtrics website with more information about the study. Those people who consent to participate in the survey will be given an opportunity to be part of a drawing for one of four Amazon $50 gift cards which will be awarded to winners after all surveys have been collected. The survey should take approximately 20-30 minutes. For those who wish to participate, please click on the link below which will direct participants to a consent form with more information about the study and the online survey. The closing date for the survey is scheduled for March 14 , 2016.
https://portlandstate.qualtrics.com//SE/?SID=SV_1F833RiyRED7O0B
I know it is quite a busy time in the term and I want to personally thank you for taking the time to read this e-mail. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me. Once again, thank you in advance for your help and participation.
Sincerely,
Jason Dolor
E-mail: jdolor(a)pdx.edu
Doctoral Candidate
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Portland State University
Dear Colleagues,
The GAISE (Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education) committee appointed by the American Statistical Association is pleased to release a draft of its report, which provides an update of the recommendations for teaching introductory statistics in the 2005 GAISE College Report. This committee has been working for 1.5 years and has previously requested input through multiple means, including webinars and conference presentations. We now invite you to read the draft report and provide feedback on its content and conceptual framework.
The draft report can be found at: www.amstat.org/education/gaise/collegeupdate . Feedback can be provided through an online survey at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/GAISEUpdate . You may also provide input directly to one of the committee co-chairs, Michelle Everson, at everson.50(a)osu.edu or Megan Mocko at mmeece(a)stat.ufl.edu. Feedback received by March 31 , 2016 will help the committee to produce its final report for consideration by the ASA Board of Directors.
Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback!
Sincerely,
Michelle Everson
Dr. Michelle Everson
Department of Statistics
The Ohio State University
415 Cockins Hall
1958 Neil Avenue
Columbus, OH 43210
614-292-3593
everson.50(a)osu.edu
Nominations are now being accepted for the Causality in Statistics Education Award
The Causality in Statistics Education Award is aimed at encouraging the teaching of basic causal inference in introductory statistics courses. Originally donated by Judea Pearl and now sponsored by Microsoft Research and Google, the prize is motivated by the growing importance of introducing core elements of causal inference into undergraduate and lower-division graduate classes in statistics. For more information, please see www.amstat.org/education/causalityprize .
Nominations and questions should be sent to the ASA office at educinfo(a)amstat.org. The nomination deadline is March 1 , 2016.
Dear Instructor,
I am writing to request your assistance in helping me recruit introductory statistics students (at either the undergraduate or graduate level) to take part in the field-testing of an assessment tool designed to measure important statistical literacy and statistical reasoning learning outcomes of introductory statistics courses. This field-testing is part of my dissertation research, under the supervision of my advisers, Joan Garfield and Andrew Zieffler at the University of Minnesota.
The assessment is composed of 40 multiple-choice items assessing topics such as representations of data; measures of center and variability; study design; hypothesis testing and p -value; probability; and bivariate data and accommodates a wide variety of introductory statistics curricula. Students should be able to complete the assessment in less than an hour.
The instrument is administered online. Other than asking that students work independently to complete the assessment, there are no other constraints on the administration (e.g., it could be completed in-class or outside of class). To increase student participation and effort when completing the assessment, you may want to provide credit or extra credit to your students. To incentivize you to recruit students, if your students complete the assessment, I will provide you with summary data describing your students’ performance. I will also provide a pooled summary of performance across all participating institutions.
Ideally, I would like you to administer the instrument to your students by May 2 nd . If this will not be possible, please let me know, and I can work with you to find a time that works. Students should have the opportunity to learn the concepts before taking the assessment, so I ask that you please administer the assessment close to end of the course.
If you are interested, please contact me at sabb0013(a)umn.edu with the following information:
- Institution name;
- Course name;
- Number of sections;
- Number of students in each section;
- Short description of the curriculum (normal/t-distribution methods; resampling/simulation methods; etc).
I sincerely hope that you will be able to help during this phase of my study, and I thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Anelise G. Sabbag
Doctoral Candidate
Department of Educational Psychology University of Minnesota