Living in Interesting Times for Introductory Statistics Education

摘要

These are interesting times in statistics education. As with the proverb, living in interesting times can be both blessing and curse. The last decade has seen the emergence of data science as an organizing theme for extracting information from data. Some claim data science is merely a rebrand-ing of statistics, a position that doesn't withstand scrutiny. We face a genuine need to collaborate, an unnatural position for many academics. Our colleagues in computer science education need to acknowledge that they are often naive with respect to statistics and the statistics education community accept that decisionmaking—the root of the demand for data science—is closely aligned with Bayesian thinking.