VOLTOLINI <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in sci.stat.edu:
>Are kids prepared to learn statistics ? Why to teach statistics for kids ?
>
>I was discussing these questions with some collegues and several of them
>said that kids are NOT prepared for statistical abstraction and then..... I
>would like to to know about your opinion. This is not a question about "how"
>but "why" to teach !
Take it from the viewpoint of good consumer education. How can they
decide whether it's worth buying a lottery ticket, or sending in a
Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes entry? How can they assess
various risks? What makes insurance a good or bad deal? What about
extended warranties? If there's a billion-to-one odds against a DNA
match, does that mean that there's only a 1 in a billion chance the
defendant is innocent? If a medical test is 99% accurate, and you
get a positive result, is there a 99% chance you have the disease?
You'll get some good ideas in any of John Allen Paulos' books.
>It seems to me that sometimes statistics can be used in classroom using real
>life examples more easily than math.
You seem to think that statistics is not part of math!
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
"US-Germany relations slide to an all-time low"
-- /Cortland Standard/ headline, 24 Sep 2002
I guess 1917-1918 and 1941-1945 don't count.
.
.
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