My teaching situation is a bit different from the others who have responded so
far. I do teach an occasional class at the university, but my main job is with
a group of hospitals and doctors doing their statistics. As part of that I
teach some classes within the hospital system to doctors/nurses/whoever. These
tend to be very different students from the undergrads at the university
(anyone else ever had a student use the excuse "I was performing surgery" for
missing class?).
These classes are less focused on how to do the stats (they will have me do
them for them), but more on the concepts so that they can understand the
literature that they read, work with me better in designing studies, and do
better at writing/presenting the results.
The university where I teach occasionally uses some web based stats program for
the intro class (even simpler than minitab in what it can do). I keep trying
to talk them into using R (through the Excel interface or RCmdr), but so far
have made little progress.
In both situations I am not teaching the students how to use R, but I still use
it to demonstrate various concepts. I mostly use simple examples (plots, quick
numbers) or those from the TeachingDemos package (that is what it was written
for (disclosure of possible conflict of interest in promoting the package: I
believe that the package author/maintainer raids my fridge more often than he
should)). Even though the students are not learning R itself, they appreciate
the concepts illustrated. The mainly GUI based illustrations could be written
in any language (but using R means that I can customize them and more advanced
students can look at the code themselves and learn more).
The R-based code usually does not phase the students even though they have not
leaned R themselves yet. Those that do not understand it just look at the
results, but many do understand the main ideas. For example, at the
university, the standard course materials use the 1970 draft lottery as an
example for showing scatterplots, correlation, relationships and other
concepts. As a bit of a teaser there is a slide that asks if the relationship
could be due to chance (this is before we get into the inference part of the
course). We don't come back and answer that teaser until the last week of
class (when we have done hypothesis testing an regression). But I like to show
the students a simple simulation at the time of the teaser with simple code
such as:
> out <- replicate(10000, cor( sample(1:366), 1:366 ) )
> hist(out)
> sum( abs(out) > 0.18 )
[1] 5
> sum( abs(out) > 0.1 )
[1] 533
> quantile( out, c(0.025, 0.975) )
2.5% 97.5%
-0.1021715 0.1003527
It takes less than a minute to explain that 1:366 is the numbers from 1 to 366
and that the sample function randomizes the order. The replicate function and
the rest of the code is fairly self explanatory even for people who don't know
any programming, but this example clearly shows that the amount of correlation
in the 1970 draft lottery was unlikely due to random chance as well as what
values we would expect to see by chance. Some of the students will stay after
class and ask about R, I explain that it is not part of the official class, but
that if they are interested here is the website and additional info ...
So, I think that R is a great tool for teaching statistical concepts even when
R is not the statistical package being used for the course itself.
--
Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
Statistical Data Center
Intermountain Healthcare
greg.s...@imail.org
801.408.8111
> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-sig-teaching-boun...@r-project.org [mailto:r-sig-teaching-
> boun...@r-project.org] On Behalf Of Robert W. Hayden
> Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2009 5:33 AM
> To: Liviu Andronic
> Cc: R-sig-teaching@r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R-sig-teaching] purpose of list
>
>
> I had some minor role in the creation of this list. At times I have
> complained that members have been too harsh in redirecting queries
> whose proper home seemed to me debatable. But as time has gone on I
> have to admit that too much (most?) of the traffic on this list is
> about how to make R work rather than how to use it in education. So,
> trying to think positively, let me toss out some general EDUCATIONAL
> questions. How are people using R for educational purposes? What do
> people think of the various GUI or alternate (e.g., spreadsheet)
> interfaces? Is there anything that makes R as easy to use for
> beginners as, say, Minitab? What about using R for educational
> simulations? Is R the tool for replacing what George Cobb calls a
> "Ptolemaic curriculum"?
>
> http://repositories.cdlib.org/uclastat/cts/tise/vol1/iss1/art1/
>
> If anyone wants to respond it might help to briefly describe your
> student audience. While I am attracted to the power of R, many of the
> folks who ask me about R are attracted by the price. That is
> especially important in a number of contexts I work with:
>
>
> my own online courses where we have no computer labs for
> students who must get their own software, often paying full
> single-copy prices
>
> public high schools in the U.S. where student computer access at
> school is limited and it is very helpful to give students something
> they can install on a computer at home
>
> people teaching in less wealthy nations
>
>
> > On 6/29/09, Martin Maechler <maech...@stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote:
> > > Wrong Mailing List !!
> > >
> > > Please use R-help for R questions!
> > >
> > <skip>
> > > AA> Assume I have the following data sets:
> > >
> > Also, please send reproducible code with dummy data. Assuming the
> data
> > is too abstract to think of a solution; and you haven't even
> mentioned
> > the exact R function that you wanted to use.
> > Best regards,
> > Liviu
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > R-sig-teaching@r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-teaching
> >
>
>
> -------> First-time AP Stats. teacher? Help is on the way! See
>
>
> http://courses.ncssm.edu/math/Stat_Inst/Stats2007/Bob%20Hayden/Relief.h
> tml
>
> Robert W. Hayden in the old library at 212 Main Street (P. O. Box
> 450)
> North Troy, VT 05859 phone (802) 988-2587 web site
> http://statland.org/
> email bob statland.org (add your own "@" and save me some spam)
>
> _______________________________________________
> R-sig-teaching@r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-teaching
_______________________________________________
R-sig-teaching@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-teaching
