We are pleased to share with you some exciting updates about Statistics Teacher. We will be welcoming Tim Jacobbe (University of Florida) as the new ST lesson plan editor starting this fall. Tim is a former chair of the ASA/NCTM Joint Committee, co-author of the ASA and NCTM co-publication Bridging the Gap Between Common Core State Standards and Teaching Statistics, and leader of the NSF-funded Levels of Conceptual Understanding in Statistics (LOCUS) project, providing high-quality K-12 statistics assessment items.
We also look forward to welcoming Jessica Cohen (Western Washington University) as the new ST article editor starting this winter. Jessica has served for many years as an associate editor of the Statistics Teacher Network (STN) newsletter, which is now Statistics Teacher. She is an advocate for K-12 statistics education.
The ST article and lesson plan editors are co-editors with Christine Franklin, the ASA’s K-12 Statistics Education Ambassador, continuing as managing editor of ST. Though we have enjoyed working as editors and bringing the new Statistics Teacher to reality, we look forward to passing the baton to Tim and Jessica.
In this issue, our first article, “How to Lie to Congress with Statistics” is by Kirk Anderson and Mary Richardson of Grand Valley State University. The authors do a nice job of explaining how to “lie” with statistics to prove a particular point of view. It’s a nice article that reminds readers to be discerning critics of statistical results by making sure data, graphs, and tables are not purposely misleading.
Our second article, “What Is Power” by Angela Walmsley and Michael Brown of Concordia University Wisconsin describes the importance of power in introductory statistics. Often, the concept of power is ignored in introductory courses. The authors provide several explanations of power and how it is related to topics like Type I and Type II errors. In addition, the authors provide examples and a flow chart to help readers critically analyze statistical articles.
There are several lesson plans in this issue, as well. These lessons were specifically chosen to make readers aware of new lessons that have been recently published and those lessons that address common hard-to-teach topics in middle and secondary curricula.
We hope you enjoy reading all the articles and lesson plans in this publication. We are interested in publishing a wide variety of topics around statistics education within various grade levels. If you are interested in writing for Statistics Teacher, please contact us at ST@amstat.org!
Sincerely,
Angela L.E. Walmsley, Co-Editor,
Concordia University Wisconsin
Hollylynne S. Lee, Co-Editor,
NC State University
Christine Franklin, Managing Editor,
ASA K-12 Statistics Education Ambassador