Are There Purposeful 'Lies' We Can Tell our Intro Students to Improve Understanding

Oregon Convention Center 

Room: CC-E145 

With JSM 2024's theme of "countering misinformation," we thought of a panel/debate on whether some 'misinformation' was acceptable, and even helpful, in teaching introductory statistics. We have recruited a group of well-known educators, with experience in curriculum development, to share their thoughts on presenting some purposeful inaccuracies when introducing foundational ideas to see whether they believe any are helpful in improving student understanding and potentially making the material more accessible to a broader audience. As statisticians, we tend to get so overly concerned about small details (e.g., choice of multiple comparison procedures), that we often lose the interest of the novice learner. The goal of this panel is to help educators, especially beginning teachers, consider what ideas are most important to instill in students, even if this implies fewer details. While we don't really mean "lying" to students (instead "foregoing irrelevant details"), we thought it would be a catchy title. The discussion could also help educators learn how to recognize and provide feedback to AI-generated responses that don't understand the big picture, and enable educators to help teach our students to be story-tellers.

Yes

Section on Statistical Consulting

Caucus for Women in Statistics

Section on Statistics and Data Science Education

Section on Teaching of Statistics in the Health Sciences