Undergraduate Statistics Education: An Introduction and Review of Selected Literature

Abstract

A recent symposium on “Improving the Work Force of the Future: Opportunities in Undergraduate Statistics Education” was held to focus attention on the importance of undergraduate statistics education. The symposium and the approval of curriculum guidelines for undergraduate degrees by the Board of Directors of the American Statistical Association have done much to define the current state of undergraduate education in statistics and suggest directions for improvement. This article summarizes the activities leading up to the symposium and provides a brief summary of six papers from the symposium that have been published. The article concludes with a discussion of some of the outstanding issues that remain to be addressed.

• BA degree in statistics
• BS degree in Statistics
• Curriculum guidelines
• Minors in statistics
• Undergraduate Statistics Education Initiative (USEI)

Acknowledgments

There are many, many people who have made contributions to the success of the efforts outlined in this article. Two of the unsung heroes of the effort, whose names do not appear in any of the references cited, are Ray Waller and Mary Fleming. Ray was the Executive Director of the ASA and Mary was Director of Programs in the ASA office during the developments outlined above. Mary went the extra mile by attending and participating fully in the initial planning meeting, the curriculum workshop, and the symposium. Ray was in attendance for at least a part of each of those meetings when his schedule allowed. Their support and enthusiasm was unfailing during the whole process.

The initial planning meeting for the symposium was attended by ten willing workers from a variety of institutions (Amstat News 1999a). Forty representatives from academia, industry, and government participated in the curriculum workshop (Scheaffer 2000). I am most appreciative of their enthusiastic work and for the over 150 people who attended the symposium and contributed to the discussions and subsequent improvements of the resulting papers. Each of these people have contributed in some way or another to the success that has been enjoyed thus far in working on the mission of the USEI.

Finally, it is a pleasure to acknowledge the writing teams who pulled the inputs from these various sources together into coherent and informative papers. These papers have done much to help our understanding of where we are with respect to undergraduate statistics education.