Happy holiday, Dennis. I have two answers to this question - pick one! First, the recognition that all of statistics, but particularly inference, is about providing, and assessing the strength of, evidence - in circumstances where some measurement(s) can sensibly be defined, and these measurements are in some manner repeated - as to the probable usefulness of some proposal about those measurements.
That one comes out fairly clumsy, as a result of trying to be very careful. You may prefer my second answer: The recognition that all concepts/procedures/skills in statistics are closely interrelated and you cannot sensibly pick out one! Regards, Alan Dennis Roberts wrote: > > on this near holiday ... at least in the usa ... i wonder if you might > consider for a moment: > > what is the SINGLE most valuable concept/procedure/skill (just one!) ... > that you would think is most important when it comes to passing along to > students studying "inferential statistics" > > what i am mainly looking for would be answers like: > > the notion of ________ > > being able to do ______ > > that sort of thing > > something that if ANY instructor in stat, say at the introductory level > failed to discuss and emphasize ... he/she is really missing the boat and > doing a disservice to students > > _________________________________________________________ > dennis roberts, educational psychology, penn state university > 208 cedar, AC 8148632401, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://roberts.ed.psu.edu/users/droberts/drober~1.htm > > ================================================================= > Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about > the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at > http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ > ================================================================= -- Alan McLean ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics Monash University, Caulfield Campus, Melbourne Tel: +61 03 9903 2102 Fax: +61 03 9903 2007 ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ =================================================================
