All Statistics are Wrong; Some Statistics are Useful

Project MOSAIC with support from NSF DUE-0920350

What do our students need to know to make informed decisions?

• Personal decisions — e.g. medical, financial
• Professional decisions — e.g. what skills to seek

What broad skills will our students need?

• In the workplace
• In interpreting the news
• In relating to scientific findings

What is the bottleneck for our students?

• Not finding a p-value

Huge amounts of data are being generated

• Outside of experimental settings
• Often without a design

Huge amounts of data are being generated

• Outside of experimental settings
• Often without a design

Students need to be prepared for a world in which:

• The economy is more invested in drawing useful conclusions from data than ever before
• Science is more driven by large amounts of data
• Personal decisions — medical, educational — connect with the research literature

Huge amounts of data are being generated

Students need to be prepared for a new world

Individuals and the media believe that data is knowledge

• They want to know how to extract useful knowledge from data
• They generally are not aware of the limitations of observational data

Work is based in teams

• Collaboration, evaluation, specialization
• The model of exchanged notes (e.g. email) has broken down

Work is based in teams

• Collaboration, evaluation, specialization
• The model of exchanged notes (e.g. email) has broken down

Publication is instant

• Old model: Get data, draft, redraft, publish
• New model: Get data, draft, publish, comment, revise, publish, new data and comment, revise and update, publish, …

Work is based in teams

• Collaboration, evaluation, specialization
• The model of exchanged notes (e.g. email) has broken down

Publication is instant

• Old model: Get data, draft, redraft, publish
• New model: Get data, draft, publish, comment, revise, publish, new data and comment, revise and update, publish, …

Topics are more complex

• From gene to genomics
• From inventory to logistics
• From treatment to medical systems