By Steephanson Anthonymuthu (Department of Statistics, The Ohio State University)
Information
Statistics has proven its status as the most powerful and essential interdisciplinary science because of its reach in all areas of science, engineering, agriculture, business, and education. This reflects there is a growing importance of teaching statistics in a careful and thoughtful manner. It is important to make good and positive impression about the learning of Statistics especially among the students who take Statistic as general education. One thing that all instructors have in common, regardless of who and what they teach in statistics, is having students who are skeptical about the effective usage of Statistics learning (eg., Loannidis, 2005; Shrout1 & Rodgers 2018). How can our classroom activities motivate and inspire students to overcome such misunderstanding?
The purpose of this study was to discuss correct and incorrect use of Statistics in scientific work with students. At the beginning of the semester, approximately 300 students in an Introductory Statistics class participated in a classroom survey activity designed to gather information on their general feelings toward Statistics. Throughout the semester, students engaged in multiple classroom discussions about the correct/incorrect use of statistical concepts. At the end of the semester, another classroom survey activity was given, and the results showed that students had overcome misconceptions and developed a better understanding of Statistics usage.