What's Missing in Statistical Education?

Abstract

There is a growing feeling in the statistical community that significant changes must be made in statistical education. Statistical education has traditionally focused on developing knowledge and skills and assumed that students would create value for the subject in the process. This approach hasn't worked. It is argued that we can help students better learn statistical thinking and methods and create value for its use by focusing both the content and delivery of statistical education on how people use statistical thinking and methods to learn, solve problems, and improve processes. Learning from your experiences, by using statistical thinking in real-life situations, is an effective way to create value for a subject and build knowledge and skills at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. The learnings from psychology and behavioral science are also shown to be helpful in improving the delivery of statistical education.

Key Words:

• Behavior change
• Discovery
• Experimental learning
• Statistical education
• Statistical thinking
• Value building