The introductory statistics course has evolved dramatically. Professor Triola will discuss content, procedures, technology, and approaches to teaching. He will describe current best practices, those that are now obsolete, and future trends. Specific references will be made to the use of tables, approximation methods, and the role of technology.

The presenter will identify topics in the introductory statistics course that are now obsolete, such as the following: Using the normal distribution when the population standard deviation is unknown and the sample size exceeds 30; the critical value method of testing hypotheses; the normal approximation to the binomial distribution; the use of tables when technology is available. The presenter will identify topics that were previously excluded but are not included, such as normal quantile plots for assessing normality, and making extensive use of graphs for exploring data. The presenter will stress the importance of activities and cooperative group projects and how they foster learning as well as encouraging students to grow in ways that are important to them personally. The role and importance of technology will be discussed. The presenter will describe how technology can be used to include some important topics that are often excluded because of time limitations. For example, the presenter will describe how technology can be easily used to include the topic of analysis of variance after students have covered methods of hypothesis testing of claims about one population mean. It will be noted that this approach is pedagogically effective in encouraging students to build upon a basic method and apply it to a new situation, so that students can vastly increase their statistics skills and extend them beyond that topics that were covered in class.

Speakers

Mario Triola, Dutchess Community College