Geir Kjetil Sandve: A simulation-based approach to learning statistics?

Statistics courses typically come in two different flavors:

1) A first type of course seeks deep understanding based on mathematical reasoning and proofs.

2) A second type of course focuses on practical applications, primarily based on fixed recipes without delving into underlying details.

3) I will here propose a third way, which seeks understanding of fundamental concepts, but through programming and simulation instead of mathematical proofs. This third way is thus geared towards students that have a stronger background in programming than mathematics, and that seek to understand the fundamentals as a basis for developing statistical analyses and data science methodology. This third way would also exploit its basis in programming to promote self-driven exploration, drawing inspiration from how computing has been integrated into science education through the long-running CSE initiative. I will provide examples ranging from how to explore the central limit theorem to performing Bayesian marginalization.

Illustrating photo

Photo: Line Schibstad Foto

Recording from the seminar (mp4). 

This seminar is part of the Odd seminar series at CCSE.

The bi-weekly ODD seminar series at CCSE

The Open Discussions on Didactics (ODD) is a seminar series on Tuesdays at 14.00 every other week (odd week numbers) on Zoom.

The seminar will be maximum one hour, often closer to half an hour. It is an informal arena to present and discuss learning theory, educational research and teaching experiences within computational science. To cater to the highly heterogeneous backgrounds and interests of students, teachers and researchers in our environment, we aim for seminars that introduce listeners to new ideas within a broad spectrum of aspects, and that invites reflection and discussion. Presentations need not be mature and polished - to the contrary we hope that as many as possible wants to share undigested observations and reflections in short presentations of varied form and topics. We hope to have enough contributions to frequently have the meetings as lightning talk sessions, where three different speakers will each give a 5-10-minute presentation followed by discussion.

 

Published Sep. 21, 2021 11:17 AM - Last modified Nov. 24, 2021 6:01 PM