Statistics education

Statistics education is the practice of teaching and learning of statistics, along with the associated scholarly research.'There is much concern and debate about the positioning of Statistics and Data Handling within the current mathematics GCSE, where it occupies some 25 per cent of the timetable allocation. On the one hand, there is widespread agreement that the Key Stage 4 curriculum is over-crowded and that the introduction of Statistics and Data Handling may have been at the expense of time needed for practising and acquiring fluency in core mathematical manipulations. Many in higher education mathematics and engineering departments take this view. On the other hand, there is overwhelming recognition, shared by the Inquiry, of the vital importance of Statistics and Data Handling skills both for a number of other academic disciplines and in the workplace. The Inquiry recommends that there be a radical re-look at this issue and that much of the teaching and learning of Statistics and Data Handling would be better removed from the mathematics timetable and integrated with the teaching and learning of other disciplines (e.g. biology or geography). The time restored to the mathematics timetable should be used for acquiring greater mastery of core mathematical concepts and operations.' By far the majority of instructors within statistics departmentshave at least a master’s degree in statistics or biostatistics (about89% for doctoral departments and about 79% for master’s departments).In doctoral mathematics departments, however, onlyabout 58% of statistics course instructors had at least a master’sdegree in statistics or biostatistics as their highest degree earned.In master’s-level mathematics departments, the correspondingpercentage was near 44%, and in bachelor’s-level departmentsonly 19% of statistics course instructors had at least a master’sdegree in statistics or biostatistics as their highest degreeearned. As we expected, a large majority of instructors in statisticsdepartments (83% for doctoral departments and 62% formaster’s departments) held doctoral degrees in either statisticsor biostatistics. The comparable percentages for instructors ofstatistics in mathematics departments were about 52% and 38%. Statistics education is the practice of teaching and learning of statistics, along with the associated scholarly research. Statistics is both a formal science and a practical theory of scientific inquiry, and both aspects are considered in statistics education. Education in statistics has similar concerns as does education in other mathematical sciences, like logic, mathematics, and computer science. At the same time, statistics is concerned with evidence-based reasoning, particularly with the analysis of data. Therefore, education in statistics has strong similarities to education in empirical disciplines like psychology and chemistry, in which education is closely tied to 'hands-on' experimentation. Mathematicians and statisticians often work in a department of mathematical sciences (particularly at colleges and small universities). Statistics courses have been sometimes taught by non-statisticians, against the recommendations of some professional organizations of statisticians and of mathematicians.