I am doing a guest spot in a colleague's class on statistics. He is a religion PhD teaching in our religion department, but the course is an interdisciplinary seminar for our "roll your own major" program. The course is title "Ways of Knowing," and folks from across the college will be stopping in to talk about how folks from their approaches know things.
I have been invited to assign a _short_ reading about stats that could be read by 1st year general education students. What should it be?
I use the Statistics as Reasoned Argument text in my advanced methods seminar, but am certain that this is too high level. I don't want to do the dry-as-dust intro psych text appendix on stats either.
Here are some thoughts about things that there might be a good reading on. Perhaps they will suggest one to you that you can suggest to me.
1) What is useful about means and what is misleading 2) Why counting things helps us do science 3) Why anecdotes don't count as science (just one cell in the 2 x 2) 4) Why counting things does not distort/disrespect individuality 5) Why mathematical models never fit perfectly (because they are abstractions
Any other help would be appreciated.
I would rather NOT focus in the reading on how statistics are misleading. I am sure we will get to that in the conversation, but the conversation is supposed to be about ways of knowing, not ways of misleading.
My thanks, -Chuck -- - Chuck Huff Psychology Department - Professor & Chair St.Olaf College - http://www.stolaf.edu/people/huff/ 1520 St. Olaf Avenue - 507.646.3169 Fax: 646.3774 Northfield, MN 55057-1098
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