Using Humor in the Introductory Statistics Course

Abstract

This paper discusses reasons for using humor in the statistics classroom. Humor strengthens the relationship between student and teacher, reduces stress, makes a course more interesting, and, if relevant to the subject, may even enhance recall of the material. The authors provide examples of humorous material for teaching students such topics as descriptive statistics, probability and independence, sampling, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, and regression and forecasting. Also, some references, summarized strategies, and suggestions for becoming more humorous in the classroom are provided.

• Learning enhancement
• Stress reduction

Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by PSC-CUNY award #62416-00-31.

Addendum

Volume 11, Number 1, of the Journal of Statistics Education contains a Letter to the Editor concerning this article.

THS, March 20, 2003