From: WLTPIRIE@VTVM1.BITNET (Walt Pirie)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.edstat-l
Subject: RITE and RONG
Date: 14 Oct 92 19:01:22 GMT
Reply-To: Walt Pirie <WLTPIRIE@VTVM1.BITNET>
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU

A note form marshall Manga titled "RIGHT and WRONG"



"When I was in junior high school, I learned about basic Newtonian
physics. They helped me understand a great deal about the world, from
shooting pool to moon shots. Later on, I discovered that there was
more to it than that, and that Newton's version was a simplification
of the real complexities of physics, as explained by Einstein. Would
trying to understand relativity theory in grade 8 really have helped?
In grade school, I learned that America was a democracy. Later on, i
learned that this was only partially true. But the initial learning
allowed me to focus on the ways in which that ideal was not being realized.

Pedantic insistence that only CORRECT knowledge be dispensed in our
educational institutions ignores the much more important factor of
whether the students are in fact ready to comprehend the subtleties
of that correct version. My own experience in stats courses was that
there was way too much concentration on fine distinctions, and way too
little communication of the basic, large-scale concepts underlying the
techniques. This is what I try to remedy in my own teaching, but it is
a constant uphill struggle against textbooks in which authors seem to
be fascinated by their own virtuosity, and administrators who have
decided that stats courses are an appropriate trial by ordeal to weed
out inferior students. Yet I continue to worry about the students first,
and the minutiae of the discipline second. Surely a concern for students
requires that you not confuse them with wildly inaccurate statements,
but as long as it does them no more harm than Newtonian physics, I
am willing to risk some fuzziness at the edges in order to communicate
the big picture."

Speaking of Sanctimonious putdowns.
And of the insidiousness of argument by analogy.
The Newtonian-Einstein analogy would fit pretty well the approach of
using the envelope question in an introductory class as a fun example
of how there are issues beyond what can be learned in a first course,
but definitely not to teaching incorrect interpretations to confidence
intervals or anything else. And analogies between imperfect political
and other sociological systems and incorrect interpretive statements
about something well defined but needing a little extra care have no
merit at all.
Finally, calling it PEDANTIC when insisting on teaching it correctly
sounds pretty scary, but I suspect it's a confusion (I hope) between
"correct & incorrect" vs. "complete & incomplete". I can't ever accept
the idea of teaching something incorrect just because it's easier.

One thing I have always believed about the benefits of studying statistic
s, is that it is an excellent tool for mental training; for learning to
carefully delineate between facile misrepresentations(like political
and advertising claims) and logical statements based on evidence and
interpretation. It seems that much of this controversy is caused by
a different goal or perspective that some have; namely that all we are
dealing with is collecting a set of rough, rather loosely designed tools.


Walt Pirie
Statistics, Va Tech