3 things every elementary statistics student should know

We’ve just published Chris Olsen’s Teaching Elementary Statistics with JMP, which offers the latest research on best practices and how JMP can facilitate teaching statistics. To mark the book’s publication, we asked Chris to tell us the top three things every elementary statistics student should know.

1. Statistics is about numbers in a context. Statistics has a rich trove of numeric and graphic techniques for quantifying and displaying data, and certainly it is important to be able to generate the numbers graphs. But the really interesting and exciting part about statistics is the leap from numbers and graphs to the real world of interpretation. Statistics gives us both knowledge and a healthy skepticism about what we believe we know – a fascinating philosophical tension!
2. The most crucial part of a statistical study is not the analysis – it is where, when, and how of the data gathering. As we enter our data and calculate and plot our statistical strategies, it is sometimes forgotten at the interpretation stage that each data point, each number, is the product of a fallible machine, human or mechanical.  Care taken at the sampling and observation stage will pay great dividends on the interpretation end of our statistical efforts.
3. Statistics, of all the mathematical sciences, depends on clear two-way communication, by both the statistician and the non-statistical client/audience. Statistics targets public social and scientific questions of importance. The statistician must be able to communicate with the public, who by and large are not statisticians. The public, for its part, must have enough statistical knowledge to grasp the information the statistician provides. This necessity for communication has profound implications for the inclusion of statistics at all levels in the K-12 and college mathematics curriculum.

Do you agree? What other ideas are key to understanding elementary statistics? Tell us, or read more in Chris Olsen’s new book, also available in Google eBook format.