The American Statistician back issues from May 2003:
Special section on statistical literacy: how you can help. (Special Section: Statistical Literacy).(Editorial)
May 01, 2003; ... I am delighted to have been asked to introduce this special section on statistical literacy. In its pages you will find revised versions of four papers that were presented at the Sixth International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS6) held in Cape Town, South Africa, in July 2002 ....
What educated citizens should know about statistics and probability.
May 01, 2003; ... 1. INTRODUCTION Statistical studies are prominently featured in most major newspapers on a daily or weekly basis, yet most citizens, and even many reporters, do not have the knowledge required to read them critically. When statistics courses were first introduced, they were ...
Teaching for statistical literacy and services of statistics agencies.
May 01, 2003; ... 1. INTRODUCTION Recent years have seen efforts to define and differentiate constructs related to the ability of people from all walks of life to act as informed consumers of statistical information. Educators, researchers, and professional organizations have attended to ...
Promoting statistical thinking among secondary school students in the national context.
May 01, 2003; ... 1. INTRODUCTION In many countries, secondary school students have a very limited vision of both the importance and impact of probability and statistics in everyday life. Their formal statistical education (e.g., in countries like Ireland) is often of a formula-based approach, ...
The getting of wisdom: educating statisticians to enhance their clients' numeracy.(understanding statistics and statistical methodology)
May 01, 2003; ... "Data are not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom."--(Anon.) "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom." (Proverbs, iv, 7) 1. INTRODUCTION: THE PROBLEM OF INNUMERACY IN SOCIETY Every society today values a literate ...
A new column in The American Statistician. (History Corner).(Brief Article)
May 01, 2003; ... With this issue, The American Statistician begins a History Corner, where statistical ideas and famous statisticians from the past are revisited and connected to what might, if remembered, be of continuing value. The statistics profession has a rich history and much of it is documented in ...
Looking back so we can look forward. (History Corner).(excerpts of article originally presented at the International Statistical Institute meetings, 1947)("History of the Uses of Modern Sampling Procedures," by Frederick Stephan)(Excerpt)
May 01, 2003; ... In this inaugural History Corner, I would like to print excerpts from the 1948 Journal of the American Statistical Association (JASA). The article is by Frederick Stephan and is entitled "History of the Uses of Modern Sampling Procedures." Before providing some context for the ...
Type I error inflation in the presence of a ceiling effect. (Statistical Practice).
May 01, 2003; ... 1. INTRODUCTION Investigators frequently use multiple regression models to assess the relationship between a continuous response variable and a set of predictor variables. Similarly, researchers are often interested in testing whether a specific variable is associated with an ...
Fixing the F test for equal variances.
May 01, 2003; ... 1. INTRODUCTION It is commonly known that the classical F test for testing equal variances is highly sensitive to the assumption that the population distributions are normal. When these distributions are nonnormal, the actual size of the test can differ greatly from the assumed ...
How do statisticians perceive statistics journals? (General).
May 01, 2003; ... 1. INTRODUCTION The recognition and development of an academic institution depends heavily on its faculty's publication record in prestigious journals (Lane, Ray, and Glennon 1990). As a result, an increased emphasis is placed on publishing in refereed journals and promotion ...
Local versus global models for classification problems: fitting models where it matters.
May 01, 2003; ... KEY WORDS: Inference; Decision making; Logistic discrimination; Model fitting; Prediction. 1. INTRODUCTION The traditional approach to prediction and decision analysis in statistics and operations research separates the model building (inferential) aspects from the ...
Exact confidence intervals for nonconstant effects by inverting the signed rank test.
May 01, 2003; ... 1. WALSH AVERAGES AND THEIR USES 1.1 Measuring Treatment Effects That Vary If a treatment effect is not constant, not the same for everyone, then one cannot describe it by describing the effect for one person. The smallest increase in complexity is to describe the ...
Monotone regrouping, regression, and Simpson's paradox. (Teacher's Corner).
May 01, 2003; ... 1. INTRODUCTION: DATA AND MOTIVATION The following data on SAT scores, which motivated this article, are taken from The College Board organization Web site collegeboard.com. U.S. entering college students are divided into groups according to high school GPAs; Table 1 provides ...
Statistical Rules of Thumb. (Reviews of Books and Teaching Materials).(Book Review)
May 01, 2003; ... Gerald van BELLE. New York: Wiley, 2002, xviii + 221 pp., $49.95 (P), ISBN: 0-471-40227-3. When presented with a book titled Statistical Rules of Thumb, a statistician's natural reaction might be to write down a few of their own favorite rules of thumb. Are they included in this ...
The Practice of Statistics: Putting the Pieces Together. (Reviews of Books and Teaching Materials).(Book Review)
May 01, 2003; ... John D. SPURRIER. Pacific Grove, CA: Duxbury, 2000, xiv + 202 pp., $37.95 (P), ISBN: 0-5343-6490-X. The American Statistical Association's (2002) curriculum guidelines for undergraduate programs in statistical science recommend that "the undergraduate experience should include ...
The First Measured Century. (Reviews of Books and Teaching Materials).(Book Review)
May 01, 2003; ... Theodore CAPLOW, Louis HICKS, and Ben J. WATTENBERG. Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 2001, xv + 308 pp., $20.00 (P), ISBN: 0-844-74138-8. I am a statistician, but sometimes I catch myself making an argument that relies heavily on anecdotal data. Sometimes I hear ...
Weighing the Odds: A Course in Probability and Statistics. (Reviews of Books and Teaching Materials).(Book Review)
May 01, 2003; ... David WILLIAMS. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001, xvii + 547 pp., $37.95 (P), ISBN: 0-521-00618-X. "Probability and Statistics used to be married; then they separated; then they got divorced; now they hardly ever see each other." Such is the admittedly mischievous ...
The Statistical Sleuth (2nd ed.). (Reviews of Books and Teaching Materials).(Book Review)
May 01, 2003; ... Fred L. RAMSEY and Daniel W. SCHAFER. Belmont, CA: Duxbury, 2002, xxvi + 742 pp., $97.95 (H + CD), ISBN: 0-534-38670-9. This is a revision of the first edition published in 1996, reviewed by Cobb (2000). The changes from the first edition are minor, consisting of the correction ...
A Handbook of Statistical Analyses using S-Plus (2nd ed.). (Reviews of Books and Teaching Materials).(Book Review)
May 01, 2003; ... Brian S. EVERITT. Boca Raton, FL: Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2001, xiii + 240, $44.95 (P), ISBN: 1-58488-280-8. S-Plus is a powerful statistical analysis tool that originated at Bell Laboratories and has since evolved into a widely used proprietary system. The proprietary software ...
A preliminary investigation of maximum likelihood logistic regression versus exact logistic regression. (Letters to the Editor).
May 01, 2003 ... KING, E. N., AND RYAN, T. P. (2002), "A PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION OF MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD LOGISTIC REGRESSION VERSUS EXACT LOGISTIC REGRESSION," THE AMERICAN STATISTICIAN, 56, 163-170: COMMENTS. BY WEBBER AND WANG AND BRADY. WEBBER King and Ryan (2002) ...
The saw-toothed behavior of power versus sample size and software solutions: single binomial proportion using exact methods. (Letters to the Editor).(Letter to the Editor)
May 01, 2003 ... Chernick, M. R., And liu, C. V. (2002), "The saw-toothed behavior of power versus sample size and software solutions: single binomial proportion using exact methods," the american statistician, 56, 149-155: comment by longmate. Chemick and Liu noted that the power of an exact ...
Separation among distributions related by linear regression. (Letters to the Editor).
May 01, 2003 ... Xie, R., And Nelson, P. I. (2003), "Separation among distributions related by linear regression," the american statistician, 57,33-36: comment by xie and nelson. Our article "Separation Among Distributions Related by Linear Regression" in the February 2003 issue of The American ...
Correction.
May 01, 2003 ... Xie, R., and Nelson, P.I. (2003), "Separation Among Distributions Related by Linear Regression," The American Statistician, 57, 33-36. A typographical error appears on page 33, just before Equation (1)--the value of the t statistic is incorrect. The correct sentence should ...