[R-sig-teaching] purpose of list

Tue Jun 30 23:02:02 CEST 2009

My teaching situation is a bit different from the others who have responded so far.  I do teach an occasional class at the university, but my main job is with a group of hospitals and doctors doing their statistics.  As part of that I teach some classes within the hospital system to doctors/nurses/whoever.  These tend to be very different students from the undergrads at the university (anyone else ever had a student use the excuse "I was performing surgery" for missing class?).

These classes are less focused on how to do the stats (they will have me do them for them), but more on the concepts so that they can understand the literature that they read, work with me better in designing studies, and do better at writing/presenting the results.

The university where I teach occasionally uses some web based stats program for the intro class (even simpler than minitab in what it can do).  I keep trying to talk them into using R (through the Excel interface or RCmdr), but so far have made little progress.

In both situations I am not teaching the students how to use R, but I still use it to demonstrate various concepts.  I mostly use simple examples (plots, quick numbers) or those from the TeachingDemos package (that is what it was written for (disclosure of possible conflict of interest in promoting the package: I believe that the package author/maintainer raids my fridge more often than he should)).  Even though the students are not learning R itself, they appreciate the concepts illustrated.  The mainly GUI based illustrations could be written in any language (but using R means that I can customize them and more advanced students can look at the code themselves and learn more).

The R-based code usually does not phase the students even though they have not leaned R themselves yet.  Those that do not understand it just look at the results, but many do understand the main ideas.  For example, at the university, the standard course materials use the 1970 draft lottery as an example for showing scatterplots, correlation, relationships and other concepts.  As a bit of a teaser there is a slide that asks if the relationship could be due to chance (this is before we get into the inference part of the course).  We don't come back and answer that teaser until the last week of class (when we have done hypothesis testing an regression).  But I like to show the students a simple simulation at the time of the teaser with simple code such as:

> out <- replicate(10000, cor( sample(1:366), 1:366 ) )
> hist(out)
> sum( abs(out) > 0.18 )
[1] 5
> sum( abs(out) > 0.1 )
[1] 533
> quantile( out, c(0.025, 0.975) )
      2.5%      97.5% 
-0.1021715  0.1003527

It takes less than a minute to explain that 1:366 is the numbers from 1 to 366 and that the sample function randomizes the order.  The replicate function and the rest of the code is fairly self explanatory even for people who don't know any programming, but this example clearly shows that the amount of correlation in the 1970 draft lottery was unlikely due to random chance as well as what values we would expect to see by chance.  Some of the students will stay after class and ask about R, I explain that it is not part of the official class, but that if they are interested here is the website and additional info ...

So, I think that R is a great tool for teaching statistical concepts even when R is not the statistical package being used for the course itself.

-- 
Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
Statistical Data Center
Intermountain Healthcare
greg.snow at imail.org
801.408.8111

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-sig-teaching-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-sig-teaching-
> bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Robert W. Hayden
> Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2009 5:33 AM
> To: Liviu Andronic
> Cc: R-sig-teaching at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R-sig-teaching] purpose of list
> 
> 
> I had some minor role in the creation of this list.  At times I have
> complained that members have been too harsh in redirecting queries
> whose proper home seemed to me debatable.  But as time has gone on I
> have to admit that too much (most?) of the traffic on this list is
> about how to make R work rather than how to use it in education.  So,
> trying to think positively, let me toss out some general EDUCATIONAL
> questions.  How are people using R for educational purposes?  What do
> people think of the various GUI or alternate (e.g., spreadsheet)
> interfaces?  Is there anything that makes R as easy to use for
> beginners as, say, Minitab?  What about using R for educational
> simulations?  Is R the tool for replacing what George Cobb calls a
> "Ptolemaic curriculum"?
> 
>        http://repositories.cdlib.org/uclastat/cts/tise/vol1/iss1/art1/
> 
> If anyone wants to respond it might help to briefly describe your
> student audience.  While I am attracted to the power of R, many of the
> folks who ask me about R are attracted by the price.  That is
> especially important in a number of contexts I work with:
> 
> 
> my own online courses where we have no computer labs for
> students who must get their own software, often paying full
> single-copy prices
> 
> public high schools in the U.S. where student computer access at
> school is limited and it is very helpful to give students something
> they can install on a computer at home
> 
> people teaching in less wealthy nations
> 
> 
> > On 6/29/09, Martin Maechler <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote:
> > > Wrong Mailing List !!
> > >
> > >  Please use R-help  for R questions!
> > >
> > <skip>
> > >     AA> Assume I have the following data sets:
> > >
> > Also, please send reproducible code with dummy data. Assuming the
> data
> > is too abstract to think of a solution; and you haven't even
> mentioned
> > the exact R function that you wanted to use.
> > Best regards,
> > Liviu
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > R-sig-teaching at r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-teaching
> >
> 
> 
> ------->  First-time AP Stats. teacher?  Help is on the way! See
> 
> 
> http://courses.ncssm.edu/math/Stat_Inst/Stats2007/Bob%20Hayden/Relief.h
> tml
> 
>   Robert W. Hayden in the old library at  212 Main Street (P. O. Box
> 450)
>   North Troy, VT 05859  phone (802) 988-2587  web site
> http://statland.org/
>   email  bob statland.org  (add your own "@" and save me some spam)
> 
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