Introduction to Statistical Reasoning (Fall 2020, Spring 2020, Fall 2019 TA)

Teaching Assistant

My primary responsibilities were attending each class in person with students and lecturer, grading homework assignments, providing details feedback on students’ work to enhance learning experience, assisting the primary instructor to maintain classroom discipline, grading exams and quizzes, and entering attendance grades for each class. In addition to this, I also held two-hour-long help sessions each week, answering any questions that students had on their homework. I made myself readily available to students via prompt email responses. Additionally, I stayed late after each class to answer questions and assisted the primary instructor where necessary. I made sure all student grades were accurate and kept up-to-date at all times.

Textbooks

• Required Textbook:
  • William S. Rayens, “The workbook: Beyond the Numbers: Student-Centered Activities for Learning Statistical Reasoning”

Course Description

The goal of this course is to help students develop or refine their statistical literacy skills. Both the informal activity of human inference arising from statistical constructs, as well as the more formal perspectives on statistical inference found in confidence intervals and hypothesis tests are studied. Throughout, the emphasis is on understanding what distinguishes good and bad inferential reasoning in the practical world around us.

Student Learning Outcomes

The primary goals of this course are:

• Human Inference: the primary intent of this module is to help students begin to absorb common statistical information appropriately and to form associated human inferences carefully. The focus will be on tables, charts and summaries in the media, but some time will be spent on the psychology of inference as well.
• Confidence Intervals: the primary intent of this module is to develop a deeper sense of what statistical confidence means and doesn’t mean by exploring sampling variability and encountering some of the important theory behind repeated sampling. The focus will be largely on polls and social surveys.
• Formal Inference: the primary intent of this module is to encounter the concepts and language of hypothesis testing by way of the more common ideas of sensitivity and specificity. Discussion will revolve around field sobriety tests and home pregnancy tests.

Software

Excel.