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About Stat 290

In their role interpreting data across disciplines, statisticians must be excellent communicators who are comfortable interacting with a wide range of statistical consumers. Hahn and Hoerl (1998) suggest that technical training is a necessary but not sufficient condition for effective statistical work. In an era in which statistical software has allowed the widespread misapplication of sophisticated analyses, statisticians must be able to communicate with both technical and non-technical audiences.

The BYU general education requirements include a first-year writing course and an advanced writing course. In addition to these typical composition courses, we designed a one-credit course (with one hour of lab each week) to enhance the communications ability of our students. Students demonstrate effective use of graphics, tables, and equations.
Learning Outcomes:
Students who receive a passing grade in this course will be able to:
  1. write a technical report on a statistical analysis
  2. create effective statistical graphics
  3. use LaTeX to create documents and presentations
  4. understand ethical considerations in misleading presentation of data

Winter 2013 (Second Block)

Winter 2013 Second Block Syllabus With Tentative Schedule

Principles of Writing About Statistical Facts (28 Feb 2013):
Lecture Notes
Homework Assignment

Principles of Writing About Statistical Inference (5 March 2013):
Lecture Notes
Homework Assignment

Ethical Presentation of Statistical Results (7 March 2013):
Before coming to class read
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/health/research/08genes.html
or, if that's too many words for you, watch
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7398476n

Lecture Notes

The link to the NY Times article that motivates the Ethics of Data Presentation in-class assignment is
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09law.html

Another interesting NY Times article about the pressures administrators feel about the data in college rankings is
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/education/gaming-the-college-rankings.html

LaTeX (12 March 2013):
Lecture Notes
Homework Assignment
The link to the LaTeX manual is http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/english/lshort.pdf

Effective Tables: Contents and Layout (14 March 2013):
Lecture Notes
Commute Report Tables

Effective Graphics (19 March 2013):
R code for Commute Experiment Data

Documenting Code (26 March 2013):
Lecture Notes
SAS Example
R Example

Homework Assignment

Technical Reports for a Non-Technical Audience (9 April 2013):
Homework Assignment and Rubric

Technical Reports for a Technical Audience (16 April 2013):
Lecture Notes
Homework Assignment and Rubric


Department of Statistics
Brigham Young University
Provo UT 84602
grimshaw [at] byu.edu
219 TMCB
801 422 6251