Opinion: Increasing Learning through Writing in Quantitative (and Computer) Courses

SUMMARY

The title of this paper might cause a culture shock among many. It would not be an exaggeration to say that among many of my colleagues in the academic community, the expression ‘writing in quantitative courses’ would be considered a contradiction in terms. Popularly, the goals and methods of composition courses and those of quantitative courses are perceived to be mutually exclusive.** Stereotypes abound regarding the methods of discourse and the practitioners of these two disciplines. Some examples are: ‘Those who write do not like the cold logic of equations and numbers’ and ‘The quantitative types are uncomfortable with the vagueness and wordiness of the literary types.’

Some of these stereotypes are not altogether without justification. The ‘quantitative’ types talk in a language where every third word is in mathematese, replete with terms such as ‘mean’, ‘median’, ‘rank’, ‘correlation’, ‘probability’ or worse! The archetypal quantitative person is the mathematics professor who fills the blackboard with arcane symbols, but is at a loss for words when asked to explain what was written.

One hardly needs to point out that this forced dichotomy between quantitative courses and the humanities ignores the symbiosis that exists between them, especially from the perspective of the former. In this paper, I would like to discuss my experience in increasing student learning through writing in quantitative and programming courses. In the first section, I present the case for writing in statistics courses, and provide some sample writing assignments; in the second section, I take up the matter of writing in computer courses; in the third, I discuss some hurdles that I have faced in implementing writing in quantitative (including computer) courses.

* A revised version of this paper was published in College Teaching Volume 40, Issue 4, pp 123‐127, 1992. Reprinted with permission of the Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation. Published by Heldref Publications, 1319 18th Street N.W., Washington D.C. 20036‐1802. Copyright 1992.

** In many instances, my observations on ‘quantitative courses’ would apply to both quantitative (eg statistics) and computer (programming) courses. This expedient was necessary because I teach courses in these two areas and I needed a shorthand expression to cover both.

Notes

* A revised version of this paper was published in College Teaching Volume 40, Issue 4, pp 123‐127, 1992. Reprinted with permission of the Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation. Published by Heldref Publications, 1319 18th Street N.W., Washington D.C. 20036‐1802. Copyright 1992.

** In many instances, my observations on ‘quantitative courses’ would apply to both quantitative (eg statistics) and computer (programming) courses. This expedient was necessary because I teach courses in these two areas and I needed a shorthand expression to cover both.