Towards Remediating Undergraduate Students Statisticophobia

Abstract

In this conceptual paper, based on teaching and TA experience, seven suggestions are made for improving the statistics experience of students in social science courses. These include hiring non-mathematicians to teach the course; emphasize conceptual statistics rather than computational approaches; recognize that many, or ever most, social science students think intuitivelyrather than scientificallyso teaching statistics as a means of answering questions is needed; loosen-up the mundane nature that statistics courses often follow; relate statistics to students day-to-day lives; and utilize an undergraduate student assistant in all sections of statistics classes.