"Richard A. Beldin, Ph.D." wrote:
>
> The question is: If you don't teach by rules, what will you use?
>
> In the Elementary Statistics course I used to teach, I had several different
> objectives.
> 1) Students should develop arithmetic reliability.
> 2) Students should learn how they can be tricked by statistical wizardry.
> 3) Students should learn how to understand what is written by responsible
> statisticians.
>
FWIW, here are the vision and mission statements
for my one year course offered to students
in the School of Nutrition Science and Policy
and Tufts. Students receive them on the first
day of class and I demand they hold me to them!
VISION STATEMENT
Every student will find Nutrition 209 to be one of the
most valuable and enjoyable course ever taken.
MISSION STATEMENT
Every student who takes Nutrition 209 will gain the
statistical skills necessary to be productive in the fields of
nutrition science and policy. In particular, each student
will have the statistical skills needed to read and produce
technical reports and to read and contribute to the published
literature. Each student will understand the basic principles
and techniques of study design and data analysis. Each
student will learn the appropriate use of common statistical
procedures and will be able to perform the necessary
calculations by using standard statistical program packages.
Each student will gain the ability to determine whether the
techniques taught in this course are appropriate for analyzing
a particular set of data, to apply those techniques to the
data, and to write a summary of findings from the analyses.
