Less Words, More Images, More Interaction

The first chapter of every statistics book is filled with definitions and vocabulary - very necessary, but can be incredibly boring to teach and to learn. I wanted to do it differently this year, so I totally reworked my lessons.

Who wants to start the semester with lecture and boredom? Not me - not this year.

Example: Visual Presentation 

We have to explain the difference between discrete and continuous variables. I used two photos (copied from the internet) of Starbucks that I projected on the screen. I said that the manager of a Starbucks wants to gather some data about their customers. She counts the number of customers who come through the drive through during the morning rush and she looks at the length of time a customer who comes inside to order stays in the restaurant. 

While I may have used the example in the past, this time I didn't write it out. I just posted the pictures and discussed it. And I wrote a brief definition of each measure below the picture. 

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Example: Participation 

In order to explain the different methods of sampling (simple random, stratified, cluster, etc.) I used an idea from the textbook (Michael Sullivan's Fundamentals of Statistics, 3rd ed.) .  I handed each student a card that had a letter on each side: "D" in red and "A" in green.  I read a statement and asked them to decide if they agree or disagree and show me their card. Tip: The most varied response was from "I enjoyed my lunch today." We counted up responses and found the actual percentage who agreed and disagreed.  I asked them to remember their response and use the same one for the entire exercise. Then we used the sampling methods to have them participate in the sampling. On the board I wrote the method and posted the counts of each sample. They helped me create definitions for each and they asked great questions and were engaged in the class. We even discussed some of the pros and cons of each method with real world examples.

What was different for me? 

The definitions came from the students more than me setting them out first and offering them an example. They were definitely more engaged in the class. While I hope that this is reflected in their quiz scores, I am pleased to see students more relaxed, which is unusual in the first week of statistics.