Mary Parker
Materials actually provided to you by the workshop are double starred, materials available at the workshop for you to look at are single starred, and those available electronically are denoted by "e". Comments in quotes are from the book unless otherwise attributed. Other comments are mine.
** Hoaglin, David C. and Moore, David S. (1992), Perspectives on Contemporary Statistics, Mathematical Association of America, Notes #21. This collection of articles by leading statisticians and statistics educators is "elementary statistics from an advanced viewpoint." These are definitely not technical articles, but focus on conceptual issues of current interest in the statistical community relevant to topics that are (or should be) taught in introductory statistics. I think that this is the best single book for a statistics teacher who is not a statistician to read in order to better understand contemporary statistics.
** Hogg, Robert V. (1992) "Towards Lean and Lively Course in Statistics" Statistics for the Twenty-first Century, Gordon and Gordon,eds., Mathematical Association of America, Notes #26. Report of an invited workshop on statistical education held in 1990 in Iowa City, Iowa.
** Cobb, George (1992), "Teaching Statistics," from Heeding the Call for Change: Suggestions for Curricular Action, Lynn Steen, editor, Mathematical Association of America, Notes #22. The idea of encouraging the students to be active learners as a means of deepening their understanding and making them better problem solvers is important in most fields today. Specific recommendations about statistics are the topic of this article. A major part of this article is a report from the Committee for Undergraduate Statistics, a joint committee of the Mathematical Association of America and the American Statistical Association, appointed in 1990 and which Dr. Cobb chairs.
Garfield, J. and Ahlgren, A. (1988), "Difficulties in Learning Basic Concepts in Probability and Statistics," Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 19, 44-63. The authors discuss many studies about students' misconceptions about probability, statistics, and various science topics. Many of these studies show disturbing evidence that standard classroom experiences produce very little change in these misconceptions. The successes they cite have classroom experiences based on activities, group work, and delay of theory and rules until motivated by simulations and experiments. However, they conclude that some of these misconceptions about uncertainty and random processes are part of a way of thinking about events that is deeply rooted in most people and much more work is needed to find effective teaching techniques to increase students' stochastic sophistication.
** Gordon, Florence and Gordon, Sheldon, editors (1992), Statistics for the Twenty-first Century, Mathematical Association of America, Notes #26. Several articles are substantially overview and motivation and many have specific suggestions.
** Rossman, Allan, (1996) Workshop Statistics, Springer-Verlag. Distributed by Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 40 Tall Pine Drive, Sudbury, MA 011776, fax:508-443-8000, mkt@jbpub.com. "Workshop Statistics is designed for courses that employ an interactive learning environment by replacing lectures with hands-on activities. The text contains enough expository material to stand alone, but it can also be used to supplement a more traditional text. . . . emphases on active learning, conceptual understanding, genuine data, and the use of technology."
** Scheaffer, Richard; Gnanadesikan, Mrudulla; Watkins, Ann; Witmer, Jeffrey, (1996) Activity-Based Statistics, Springer-Verlag. Distributed by Jones and Bartlett Publishers. (see Rossman above) The text for the students is called the Student Guide and there is an Instructor's Guide. "Statistics should be taught more as an experimental science and less as traditional mathematics. The activities are organized around the major topics covered in most introductory statistics courses. . . . contains far more activities than can be used efficiently in one course."
Quantative Literacy series (1987): Exploring Data, by James M. Landwehr and Ann E. Watkins. Exploring Probability, by Claire M. Newman, Thomas E. Obremski, and Richard L. Schaeffer. The Art and Techniques of Simulation, by Mdrulla Gnanadesikan, Richard Schaeffer, and Jim Swift. Exploring Surveys and Information from Samples, by James M. Landwehr, Jim Swift, and Ann E.Watkins. In an effort to introduce the most important and up-to-date topics in statistics into the elementary and secondary curriculum, the Joint Committee on the Curriculum in Statistics and Probability of the American Statistical Association and National Council of Teachers of Mathematics initiated the Quantative Literacy project. These four books of activities are part of their work. The spiral-bound books are available in teacher's editions also, which give answers, discussion questions, quizzes, etc. Publisher: Dale Seymour Publications, P.O. Box 10888, Palo Alto, CA 94303, order by phone 800-872-1100 or by fax 415-324-3424.
* University of the Pacific Math Dept, Lab Manual for Math 37, 3rd ed, locally produced (Beth Chance) Based on MINITAB.
* Egge, Eric; Foley, Sean; Haskins, Loren; Johnson, Roger (1995) Statistics Lab Manual, 3rd ed., locally produced at Carleton. Uses SPSS.
* Spurrier, John, Edwards, Don, and Thombs, Lori, Elementary Statistics Laboratory Manual (1995) Duxbury Press. Based on MINITAB and is available in both DOS and Mac versions. " Our primary goal in writing this laboratory manual is to lead students through a series of 'hands-on' experiments that illustrate important points of applied statistics." The technical writing appendices look very good. For a comprehensive discussion, http://www.geom.umn.edu/docs/snell/chance/teaching_aids/concepts.html
Pearl, Dennis K. and Stasny, Elizabeth A. (1992), Experiments in Statistical Concepts, Kendall-Hunt Publishing Company, Dubuque, IA. This lab manual is tied to Data Desk, a statistical software package, and is used at Ohio State University.
e Fillebrown, S. (1994) "Using Projects in an Elementary Statistics Course for Non-Science Majors" JSE, Volume 2, Number 2.
* Ledolter, Johannes, (1995) "Projects in Introductory Statistics Courses" The American Statistician, v. 49, n. 4.
e Mackisack, M. (1994) "What is the Use of Experiments Conducted by Statistics Students?" JSE, Volume 2, Number 1.
Halvorsen, Katherine T. and Moore, Thomas L. (1991), "Motivating, Monitoring, and Evaluating Student Projects," American Statistical Association Proceedings of the Section on Statistical Education, 20-25.
** Roberts, Harry (1992) "Student-Conducted Projects in the Introductory Statistics Course," Statistics for the Twenty-first Century.
Zahn, Doug. Dr. Zahn teaches a large lecture course in introductory statistics in which the students do term projects. He has prepared extensive instructions to students, sample projects, job descriptions for teaching assistants, etc. Because so many people ask him for copies, he asks for per page copying costs and a modest handling charge. If you write to him, he will send you an annotated bibliography of resources and an order form. One of the items is a 33 page set of instructions for term projects. Doug Zahn, Dept. of Statistics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-3033.
e World-Wide Web. There are many ways to get in. Robin Lock has listed several links for us at http://it.stlawu.edu/~rlock/stats96 The Journal for Statistical Education maintains an information resource http://www2.ncsu.edu/ncsu/pams/stat/info/infopage.html
* Chatterjee, Samprit; Handcock, Mark S.; Simonoff, Jeffrey S. (1995) A Casebook for a First Course in Statistics and Data Analysis, John Wiley & Sons. "Each case is motivated by a question that needs to be answered, and full background material is presented. The statistical analysis flows naturally from the question. This discussion given in the cases attempts to demonstrate the logic of the analysis and emphasize the the interactive and iterative nature of the task." Beth comments: "A great source of interesting data sets, challenging "practice problems" on real, interesting data. The data sets are rich. Students need to consider the assumptions and employ the scientific process."
** Hand, D.J., et. al. (editors), (1994) Handbook of Small Data Sets, Chapman and Hall. This has about 500 data sets (with descriptions) that are small enough to be easily used in a classroom. A disk with the data sets in PC readable form is included in the book.
** Singer, Judith D. and Willett, John B. (1992), "Annotated Bibliography of Sources of Real-World Datasets Useful for Teaching Applied Statistics," from Statistics for the Twenty-first Century. It is in this notebook.
** e Snell, J. Laurie (1992), "CHANCE: Case Studies of Current Chance Issues," from Statistics for the Twenty-first Century. The Chance project is really about an innovative course in probability and statistics inspired by Chance magazine. The goal is to get students attuned to the presence and importance of issues of probability and statistics in the world around them. The Chance project identifies and describes chance issues in major news media and journals such as Science, Nature, and the New England Journal of Medicine. In most cases, some discussion questions for each article are included. http://www.geom.umn.edu/docs/snell/chance/welcome.html
* Tanur, Judith M., et. al. (1989), Statistics, A Guide to the Unknown, 3rd ed. Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole. These 28 articles "describe important applications of statistics and probability in many fields of endeavor. Co-sponsored by the American Statistical Association and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the book is aimed primarily at people without any special knowledge of statistics, probability, or mathematics." Problems and discussion questions are included for each article.
** Witmer, Jeffrey A. (1992), Data Analysis: An Introduction, Prentice-Hall. This paperback book "is designed to supplement an introductory course in statistics, allowing the integration of realistic applications and computer software into the course. It is designed to be used with any standard textbook." Stem-leaf diagrams, smoothing data, normal probability plots and transformation of variables, regression diagnostics, observational studies vs. controlled experiments, Simpson's Paradox, and other such topics are not covered in many elementary texts yet. Use of this book as a supplement enables students to understand important tools used by practicing statisticians today and to use the computer as a tool for exploration and question-formulation as well as for doing calculations efficiently.
Against All Odds. This series of 26 half-hour videotapes was developed and produced by the Annenberg CPB Foundation. They cover the standard material of an introductory statistics course. These are not "talking head" shows. The quality is more like standard public broadcasting shows such as Nova. More than half the time of each show is devoted to showing a real application of the statistical techniques being discussed, with scenes from and interviews in hospitals, national parks, etc. A short time is devoted to illustrating how to perform the statistical techniques discussed
While the videotapes can be used with any text, one of the developers, David S. Moore, has two introductory texts which the tapes follow closely: Introduction to the Practice of Statistics, 2nd ed. (with George McCabe (1993) and Basic Practice of Statistics (1995), both published by W. H. Freeman.
The entire series is available for limited broadcast use and library use for under $500. (There is an additional fee per student if it is used as a stand-alone television course.) At my college, we show this on our cable TV channel as a supplement to our introductory statistics course, and my students who take the time to watch the tapes find them very motivational and helpful.
* Statistics: Decisions through Data (1992) These five hour-long videotapes have shorter clips (12-15 minutes) from the Against All Odds series. COMAP, Inc., Suite 210, 57 Bedford St., Lexington, MA 02173. An extensive teacher guide, written by David Moore, is available. (Jon handed out a list of what topics are covered on which tapes and how long each clip is.)
** Garfield, Joan (1994), "Beyond Testing and Grading: Using Assessment To Improve Student Learning" Journal for Statistics Education, v. 2, n. 1.
** Garfield, Joan (1995) "How Students Learn Statistics" International Statistical Review, v. 63, no. 1, p. 25-34.
** Garfield, Joan "An Authentic Assessment of Students' Statistical Knowledge" Assessment in the Mathematics Classroom
Archbald, Doug A. & Newmann, Fred M. (1988) Beyond Standardized Testing: Assessing Authentic Academic Achievement in the Secondary School, National Association of Secondary School Principals, 1904 Association Dr., Reston, Va. 22091, 703-860-0200
e The American Statistical Association has a Statistics Education section, which has various activities, including a newsletter. Much information is available to nonmembers. http://www.amstat.org/
e The JSE Information Service maintains links to many interesting sites on the Web. http://www2.ncsu.edu/ncsu/pams/stat/info/infopage.html
e EDSTAT-L is an electronic discussion list about statistics education. Archives are available. Find these through the JSE Information service. You may subscribe, but be aware that there are usually quite a lot of messages. Subscribe by sending the one-line e-mail message (fill in your real name, of course):
SUBSCRIBE EDSTAT-L Yourfirstname Yourlastname
to the Internet address LISTSERV@NCSUVM.CC.NCSU.EDU
Chance: New Directions in Statistics and Computing. A "news magazine for professionals using statistical tools and analysis in a wide range of businesses, industries, and research." The articles remind me of Scientific American, but about statistical topics, of course. More info is available from the American Statistical Association.
The American Statistician. This quarterly journal of the American Statistical Association has articles of general interest to statisticians. It is not a research journal. The sections are: General, Teacher's Corner, Statistical Practice, Statistical Computing (including software reviews), Commentaries, and Letters to the Editor. The Teacher's Corner publishes material of interest to teachers of the first mathematical statistics course and applied statistics courses. It includes a subsection. Accent on Teaching Materials, in which appear announcements and selected reviews of teaching materials of general use to the statistical field.
* STATS. This is the American Statistical Association's student magazine. Many articles in it are within the reach of elementary statistics students.
e Journal for Statistics Education. This refereed journal is free and only available by electronic mail. One can subscribe to the journal alone or to the journal and the discussion generated by the articles. Subscribers receive an e-mail message with the Table of Contents and information about how to request each particular article or section. To subscribe, send one of the following messages to LISTSERV@JSE.STAT.NCSU.EDU.
SUBSCRIBE JSE-ANNOUNCE First Name Last Name
SUBSCRIBE JSE-TALK First Name Last Name
All issues are available on the Web. Start with the JSE Information Service.
http://www2.ncsu.edu/ncsu/pams/stat/info/infopage.html
Statistical Science. This quarterly journal of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics aims "to present the full range of contemporary statistical thought at a technical level accessible to the broad community of practitioners, teachers, researchers, and students of statistics and probability." The articles are mostly by leading statisticians but are broader and more expository than articles in the research journals. This is also a relatively new journal, founded in 1986.
SLAW (Statistics in Liberal Arts Colleges Workshop) prints technical reports on issues of interest, including issues related to the teaching of statistics. To get on the mailing list, contact Don Bentley, Math Dept., Pomona College, Claremont, CA 91711. DBENTLEY@POMONA.CLAREMONT.EDU
* Cryer, Jonathan D. & Miller, Robert B. (1994) Statistics for Business: Data Analysis and Modeling, International Thomas Publishing (Wadsworth). This book starts with a lot of material on building models and producing data in order to help students understand variation.
* Freedman, David; Pisani, Robert; Purves, Roger; Adhikari, Ani (1991) Statistics, 2nd ed., W. W. Norton
There's no other intro text like this one. It's quite intellectually sophisticated, but not computational at all. Read about George Gallup and sampling on p. 306-307 and 315-318. You'll use these stories in your sampling lectures from now on! It also has very good problems. You need it on your shelf for reference even if it's not your text.
* Moore, David S. (1991) Concepts and Controversies, 3rd ed., W.H. Freeman. David's first intro stat book. It emphasizes all the things he thinks are important, without the computational material. It, too, starts with a substantial emphasis on the complications of producing and presenting data. That's a different emphasis than beginning with the data already given. We'd recommend that any teacher read it for themselves. Read p. 62-68 for some interesting perspectives on surveys.
** Moore, David S. (1995) Basic Practice of Statistics, W.H. Freeman. A widely used and respected intro text among statisticians. Conveys the same "feel" for statistics as the Concepts and Controversies, but with enough computation to be comparable to virtually any other intro stat course. Is shorter and considerably more readable than his earlier text, Intro to the Practice of Statistics.
* Moore, Davd S. & McCabe, George P. (1993) Introduction to the Practice of Statistics, 2nd ed. W.H. Freeman. David intended for this book to be appropriate for an intro stat course at any level, including graduate school. It has more optional material than many teachers of freshman intro statistics need. David worked hard to make the new one -- Basic Practice of Statistics -- more readable and shorter than this. He succeeded, but I really miss some of what was left out. I can't imagine a better discussion of the complexity of dealing with outliers than on p. 14-15. My students always liked that on day 1, and it helped communicate the idea that statistics is interesting, but understandable. I asked him to include it in Basic Practice of Statistics, but he didn't.
"Any Moore book is much better than traditional texts on trying to get students to understand the concepts behind the procedures. Also, the problems emphasize these concepts in addition to the calculations, e.g. mean vs. median, interpretation of confidence intervals, p-values, etc." Beth Chance
* Ott, R. Lyman (1993) An Introduction to Statistical Methods and Data Analysis, Wadsworth. Beth Chance says that this "has enough material for two semesters and really good, straightforward explanations."
* Peters, William S. (1987) Counting for Something: Statistical Principles and Personalities, Springer-Verlag. Since it doesn't have problem sets, it isn't really a text, but the material is substantially intro-course material. This is a blend of history and concepts. Read p. 100-107 to learn about the beginning of modern statistics. It also has much more about lots of different kinds of averages, in a quite intellectually sophisticated fashion, than any other book I've seen. For examples, see p. 22-23.
* Siegel, Andrew F. & Morgan, Charles J. (1996) Statistics and Data Analysis, 2nd ed., John Wiley & Sons. Beth Chance says, "Previous editions have been highly reviewed by people I agree with. In the same vein as Moore. May come bundled with the Student Version of MINITAB (cheap)!"
* Utts, Jessica M. (1995) Seeing Through Statistics, Duxbury. She includes many real examples (newspaper articles) and doesn't always agree with the conclusion in the article. If you want a text that will support your students learning to critique statistical reports, this looks great. It is conceptual, with the formulas relegated to the ends of the chapters. Beth finds that the problems are really good.
**? Wardrop, Robert, Statistics: Learning in the Presence of Variation. Bob Hayden and Chris Olsen say "This is a good, interesting, innovative text. It integrates statistics and experimental design, giving a flavor of the whole research enterprise." (This was published by W.C. Brown, but will be published differently in the future. We are trying to have these sent to all the workshop participants.)
* Greenberg, Betsy. (1993, 1995) MINITAB Guides to Moore's books, W.H. Freeman. These cost about $20 unless you can convince the publisher to shrink-wrap them with the text. They are well-done and explain how to use the command-line versions as well as info on how to use the menus. They have quite a number of the problems from the texts, numbered consistently, with hints about how to do them and info about how to find the data sets. Free instructor's copy to adopters of the text.
* Notz and Busam, Study Guide for Moore's Basic Practice of Statistics, (1995) W.H. Freeman. Includes section overviews and lots of worked-out solutions to problems in the text. Free instructor's copy to adopters of the text.
* Velleman, Paul F. (1993) Learning Data Analysis through DataDesk, W.H. Freeman & Co. The focus is on exploratory data analysis. Data Desk, for Macs, is a highly regarded graphical and interactive data analysis and statistics program. This is the student version.
Minitab Mini-Manual (1995) Minitab, Inc. "(This) provides you with answers to most of the questions you will have as a new user of Minitab Statistical Software. Rather than fully documenting all features and functions, this manual explains the fundamentals of using Minitab -- how to enter commands, how to manage data and files, how to manipulate and analyze data, how to produce graphs, how to use on-line Help -- in a small inexpensive book."
Gonick, Larry & Smith, Woollcott (1993) The Cartoon Guide to Statistics, Harper Collins. A good source of ideas to amuse you and your students.
Cohen, Victor (1989) News and Numbers: A Guide to Reporting Statistical Claims and Controversies in Health Care and Other Fields, Iowa State U Press.
Paulos, John Allen, A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, Basic Books.
Tufte, Edward, The Visual Display of Quantative Information (1983) & Envisioning Information (198?) Graphics Press. These are wonderful coffee table books. Use some of the ideas in this to improve your graphical presentation of data substantially. Presenting data in good graphical form is a more sophisticated task than you might think.
* Cleveland, William S. (1993) Visualizing Data, A.T.&T. Bell Laboratories. "Visualization is critical to data analysis, revealing intricate structure in data that cannot be absorbed in any other way. we discover unimagined effects, and we challenge imagined ones. . . The reader should be familiar with basic statistics and the least-squares method dof fitting equations to data."
Chatfield, Christopher. (1988) Problem Solving: A Statistician's Guide, Chapman and Hall, 1988. ``This book is written for anyone who has studied a range of basic statistical topics but still feels unsure about tackling real-life problems. How can reliable data be collected to answer a specific question? What is to be done when confronted with a set of real data, perhaps rather `messy' and perhaps with unclear guidelines?'' A couple of my math stat students who took summer jobs with industry helping with statistics said that my recommendation of this book was one of the most important things I did to help them.
Mandansky, A. (1988) Prescriptions for Working Statisticians, Springer-Verlag. ``The first course in statistics, no matter how `good' or `long' it is , typically covers inferential procedures which are valid only if a number of preconditions are satisfied by the data. . . . (Students) do not learn how to check . . . (these preconditions) and certainly do not learn how to adjust their data and/or model so that these assumtions are met. To help this student out I designed a second course, containing a collection of statistical diagnostics and prescriptions necessary for the applied statistician so that he can deal with the realities of inference from data, and not merely with the kind of classroom problems where all the data satisfy the assumptions associated with the technique to be taught.''
Iverson, Gudmund R. (1984) Bayesian Statistical Inference, Sage Publications, Number 07-043. ``Professor Iverson provides a gentle and lucid introduction to Bayesian methods, and uses several simple examples to ensure comprehension by the neophyte.'' (Series editor) This pamphlet is number 43 of a series of 70 pamphlets which provide introductory explanations and demonstrations of various data analysis techniques applicable to the social sciences. The pamphlets are less than 100 pages long and cost about $8 each.
Williams, A Sampler on Sampling, John Wiley & Sons This book takes one fairly small data set and illustrates, in detail, many different types of sampling besides simple random sampling. For those interested in pursuing the topic of sampling schemes and the associated variance calculations, this would be a fine book with which to begin.
* Milliken, George A. & Johnson, Dallas E. (1992) Analysis of Messy Data, Volume I: Designed Experiments, Van Nostrand Rheinhold. "Typically, experimental data involve missing observations, outliers, or failures of the usual assumptions that render standard statistical methodology useless. Analyzing messy data with techniques developed for nice data can produce results that are often meaningless or uninterpretable, and many existing computing packages do not always yield correct results. Unfortunately, experimenters are frequently ignorant of these consequences. The basic purpose of this book is to present several techniques and methods for analyzing nonstandard, or messy, data sets effectively and correctly."
* Cook, R. Dennis & Weisberg, Sanford (1994) An Introduction to Regression Graphics, John Wiley & Sons. "By allowing informative and novel visualizations of regression data, modern computer hardware and software promise to reverse the historical roles of numerical and graphical regression methods. How shall this be done in practice? What can be learned from graphs and which graphs should be drawn? How can graphs be used to learn about fundamental features of regression problems?"
Feller, William. An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications, Vol. 1 (discrete distributions), 3rd ed. 1968. Vol. 2 (continuous distributions), 2nd ed. 1971. John Wiley & Sons. The standard reference of probabilists. It is a serious mathematical treatment of the subject, but includes numerous examples and exercises designed to develop the reader's intuition in the art of probabilistic formulation. Graduate-level, but does not assume knowledge of measure theory.
Kendall, Sir Maurice, Stuart, Alan, and Ord, J. Keith. The Advanced Theory of Statistics Volume 1, Distribution Theory, 5th ed. 1987. Volume 2, Inference and Relationship, 5th ed. 1991. Volume 3, Design and Analysis and Time-Series, 4th ed. 1983. Oxford University Press and Charles Griffin & Co. Ltd. Excellent reference books. They are useful to the person who wants only an overview as well as the one who wants to explore the deeper concepts involved. Graduate-level, but do not assume knowledge of measure theory.