Transcript Course Variations on a Theme: Strengthening the Quantitative

Course Variations on a Theme:
Strengthening the Quantitative
Reasoning of First-Year Students
The Psychology of Numbers:
A Fair and Balanced Look at Statistical
Reporting
Mija Van Der Wege
Carleton College
The Plan
• Course Context
• Course Objectives
• Course Topics
• Course Assignments
• Lessons Learned
Course Context
• First-year, first-term seminar
• Discussion oriented
• Writing rich
• Focused on introducing students to college-level
thinking and skills
Course Objectives
• Learn about scientific hypothesis testing, conditional
probability, a sense of orders of magnitude, and
experimental design
• Learn about psychological representations and
processing of numbers
• Practice effective use of numbers in rhetorical
argument
• Develop a habit of mind of critiquing numerical
evidence
Course Topics
• Autism Epidemic Case Study
• Methods and Statistics
• Writing with Numbers
• Cognitive Representations of Number
• Framing and Response Biases
• Ethics
Course Assignments
• Numbers in the News
• Critically Reading Journalistic Reports of Research
• Comparing Journalistic Reports to Primary Sources of
Research
• Writing about Primary Sources of Research
• Numbers in the News Magazine
Lessons Learned
• Approaches to numbers (Joel Best)
• The Naive
• The Cynical
• The Critical
• Communication
• Appreciation for perspective and bias in writers
• Appreciation for perspective and bias in readers
• Creating a habit of mind
Questions?
http://serc.carleton.edu/nnn/quantitative_writing/examples/28281.
html