Alarming! The Chasm Separating Basic Statistics Education from its Necessities

Book excerpt: The fairly large sample of current basic statistics books I gave thought to recently may, in my view, be characterized as number pushers with a large number of illustrations intended to convey a sense of the importance of statistics to the study of real-world problems. What’s wrong with that? Nothing, provided that what I submit to be the necessities of statistics education are given the attention they warrant, are not smothered by glitz, overwhelming attention to number pushing, do not receive shortshrift, or are not mentioned at all. Am I being too critical? I invite you to give thought to fifteen, issues/questions that are the core of the aforenoted chasm and render your verdict. Food-for-thought in support of the issues/questions raised along with answers/discussion are included. Many students and those who apply statistics to their fields of interest subscribe to the view that to apply statistics to a problem/situation all you need do is throw your data into a computer and let it do its thing. The further they travel along this road of thought the more we can expect misunderstanding of statistics and, when it comes to publication, statistical junk. I believe that the only way to change the direction of this road of thought is to incorporate into our teaching of basic statistics what is feasible of the necessities of statistics education. For further discussion of the necessities of basic statistics education I recommend the book I coauthored with my colleagues Irwin Kabus and Mitchell Preiss: Statistics: Basic Principles and Applications, 2nd ed, (Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co., 2000) or the revised 2nd ed., W. J. Adams (Xlibris, 2009).