Statistical Literacy Textbook

STATISTICAL LITERACY:

This is the text being used as the Statistical Literacy textbook at Augsburg College and at Capella University.  This text was developed as a key part of the W. M. Keck Statistical Literacy Project at Augsburg College.

In 2005, Capella University began offering Statistical Literacy on-line using this textbook. Dr. Valerie Perkins, Dean of Capella's School of Under-graduate Studies, notes, "Schield's approach to statistical literacy helps Capella students think critically while satisfying Capella's general education requirement in mathematical and logical reasoning."

Peter Holmes, Royal Statistical Society Centre for Statistical Education, said, "I am convinced that the standard first course in statistics, which focuses on getting to significance testing and confidence intervals, isn't an appropriate aim for a lot of students. I think Milo's approach to statistical literacy is much closer to what is needed by journalists, by policy makers, by those in business commerce or management and by most people in everyday life."

Statistical Literacy is closely related to numeracy, quantitative literacy/reasoning and statistical thinking/reasoning.  They all focus on concepts or techniques involving numbers in context -- typically numbers presented in the daily news.

But there are differences. Quantitative literacy/reasoning typically focuses on math topics such as rates and rates of change, percent of, graphs of change (first and second derivatives), linear and exponential rates of growth, accumulation (integral), installment loans, savings and weighted averages, indexes and condensed measures, estimation, plane geometry, graphical production and representation and probability (single and conditional).  Statistical thinking/reasoning typically focuses on statistics involving distributions and variation -- specifically random variation such as that encountered in random selection or random assignment.  Both quantitative reasoning and statistical thinking focus primarily on math problems, math techniques and math concepts. 

Statistical Literacy is quite different.  Statistical Literacy studies statistics used as evidence in everyday arguments.  As such this text may be closer to critical thinking or rhetoric than to mathematics or statistics.  This text uses the admonition, "Take CARE!" as a reminder that statistics are human constructs.  Statistical literacy studies those factors that influence the size and direction of a statistic.  Each of the four letters in CARE stand for a kind of influence on the size of a statistic: Context (comparisons, ratios, study design and confounding), Assembly (how statistics are defined and presented), Randomness (chance, margin of error and statistical significance) and Error or bias.  The bulk of the book is spent on the first two types of influence.

The goal of the text is to help readers evaluate the strengths and weaknesses in statistics that are used as evidence in everyday arguments.  These statistics include government-generated statistics: country-wide statistics (c.f., US Statistical Abstract), education statistics (c.f.,  National Assessment of Educational Progress) and health statistics (c.f., Center for Disease Control).

This text is quite different.  Instead of algebra, it uses ordinary English to describe and compare counts, measures and conditional probabilities.  It focuses on reading and interpreting statistics presented in tables and graphs.  It present a new graphical technique to show how a factor is "taken in account" or "controlled for."  It requires "hypothetical thinking" for students to imagine how things might have been defined, measured, compared or presented differently.  It requires hypothetical thinking for students to imagine plausible confounders for observed associations.

Schield's "Statistical Literacy", 2009, Fourth Edition (Preliminary Version)

• Outcomes using Take CARE methodology (34 KB)
• Detailed Tables of Contents for all Chapters: (120 KB)

CONTENTS

• Introduction (250 KB)
• Chapter 1: The Story behind the Statistics
• Chapter 2: Take CARE
• Chapter 3: Understanding Measurements
• Chapter 4: Describing Ratios
• Chapter 5: Comparing Ratios
• Chapter 6: Understanding Ratios
• Chapter 7: Chance and Confidence
• Appendix: Additional Tables
• Tables of Figures, Tables and Stories
• Equations, Glossary and Index (227 KB)

Contents: 407 pages, 118,363 words.  588,535 characters. 
37 equations, 54 stories, 96 tables, 152 figures. Glossary 151 terms

BOOK BACKGROUND:
This book was based on research findings of the W. M. Keck Statistical Literacy Project.
For an overview, see Isaacson's "Statistical Literacy -- Online at Capella University."
For an overview of the conceptual design, see Schield's "Statistical Literacy and Liberal Education at Augsburg College."
For a review of the technical aspects, see Schield's Statistical Literacy Curriculum Design.
For a review of difficulties in reading tables and graphs, see Schield's "Statistical Literacy Survey: Reading Tables and Graphs."
For papers on teaching confounding using the new graphical technique, see:

• Presenting Confounding Graphically Using Standardization, 2006 Draft for Stats magazine
• Confound Those Speculative Statistics 2009 ASA

Order Status: 
The first editions are limited distribution editions used primarily for teaching while developing the associated assignments and quizzes. The 4th edition (2009) is updated to go with the more than 1,000 Moodle exercises that are available to teachers that use this book.

Statistical Literacy at Augsburg College: GST 200

• 2008StatLit2A Brochure: Course Overview.

• Brochure that highlights the critical thinking aspects of the course including the focus on hypothetical thinking.

• Application for a "Big Q" qualification at Augsburg College.

• GST 200 is approved by Augsburg College as both a little Q (QL foundations) course AND a big-Q (QL applications) course (6/2008).

Over a Hundred Topics (Over a Thousand Problems):
As Lynn Steen noted, "concept" QL courses tend to be light on exercises.  Over 130 homework topics involving right-wrong exercises have been identified for this book.  More than a hundred of these topics have been implemented in Moodle as multiple choice quizzes with over 1,000 problems.  Having right-wrong exercises online gives students immediate feedback, eliminates the need for instructor grading, minimizes the class time needed to review these topics, and allows the instructor to see which kinds of exercises are giving the students the most difficulty. Here is a current list of the class-room tested, Moodle-based, right-wrong exercises.

Web-based Drill Programs:
The part-whole reading drill program currently has 186 problems. 131 for descriptions, 43 for common-part comparisons and 12 for distinct part comparisons.

The writing drill program currently has 301 problems:  6 chance-related, 266 involving tables, 14 involving bar graphs and 15 involving pie charts.
These programs are being expanded.  The most recent upgrade was to add chance/probability grammar to both programs.