🚀 go-pugleaf

In a discussion of "experience" / "examples"

S. J. Cavrak writes:

	imagine a math textbook with Mathematica built in; a
	statistics textbook with JMP and several years worth of
	opinion polls and economic data; an astronomy text with tons
	of images of the planets (gis type); an environmental studies
	text with stella, etc.

H. Rubin comments:

	I can see something like Mathematica being included in a good
	textbook teaching mathematical concepts.  But the stuff you
	have mentioned has no place in a statistics book until the
	concepts, none of which are even illustrated by the methods
	and data suggested above, are clearly understood.  (Well, the
	opinion polls might be all right for examples, but not as
	usually given.)  

Definitely not as usually "given."  Here I was thinking of students
having access to "raw" data -- and lots of it from a variety of sources
that might relate to their particular interests -- and "tools" to
"look" at data in a variety of ways.  One or two examples of "mean"
and "mode" and "median", etc., are generally too abstract.  I think
that students have to "tackle" data on their own, and that the data in
some sense has to be "real."  

Calculating the "average" of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 can indeed illustrate the
concept of "average" (and so can 1, 1, 1, 1, 5; etc.) but many students
find these on the abstract side.  (Great story about teaching
percentages - and how their relationship to money ! - later maybe.)

But I don't see this as a class room "exercise" as much as a "consulting"
exercise -- getting the "student" to explain to the "teacher" what is
going on with the data as the teacher and the student generate different
views.

"Will the Average American Please Stand Up?" 

Ciao

Steve