I wouldn’t say statistics as much as data analysis. Statistics too often means conventional hypothesis testing, which I doubt the Bayesian Conspiracy is too hot on.
I remember one very clever fellow who designed speaker systems shared an anecdote about the company he worked in. Apparently, they had a computer program that would generate the frequency and spatial response of speaker systems. With enough use, people would develop an intuition about system design that went far beyond the usual state of design. They had a feel for the right answers that went beyond knowing how to set up the calculations.
What people largely lack is any feel for data distributions. So much of statistics are analytic methods for dealing with data that can be completed more straightforwardly with non parametric methods. Let the computers do the data crunching, and teach people to make decent estimates based on data. That’s so much more useful for life, and would provide the added benefit of teaching students that the real world has better and worse answers, not right answers.
I wouldn’t say statistics as much as data analysis. Statistics too often means conventional hypothesis testing, which I doubt the Bayesian Conspiracy is too hot on.
I remember one very clever fellow who designed speaker systems shared an anecdote about the company he worked in. Apparently, they had a computer program that would generate the frequency and spatial response of speaker systems. With enough use, people would develop an intuition about system design that went far beyond the usual state of design. They had a feel for the right answers that went beyond knowing how to set up the calculations.
What people largely lack is any feel for data distributions. So much of statistics are analytic methods for dealing with data that can be completed more straightforwardly with non parametric methods. Let the computers do the data crunching, and teach people to make decent estimates based on data. That’s so much more useful for life, and would provide the added benefit of teaching students that the real world has better and worse answers, not right answers.