SPECIAL MATERIAL
Math Is Music;
Statistics Is Literature
(Or, Why Are There No Six-Year-Old Novelists?)
Richard D. De Veaux,
Williams College, and
Paul F. Velleman,
Cornell University
A
lmost 30 years ago, something happened
Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the ASA
that made introductory statistics harder to
that produced the Guidelines for Assessment and
teach. Students didn’t suddenly become less
Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) Report—
teachable, nor did professors forget their craft. It was
have pushed us all to change our teaching. And a
that we began to switch from teaching statistics as a
new generation of texts has appeared following the
mathematics course to teaching the art and craft of
advice of these reports, challenging statistics teach-
statistics as its own discipline. When statistics was
ers to use this new approach.
viewed as a subspecialty of mathematics, students
But why is it more difficult to teach this way?
were taught to manipulate formulas and calculate
And why is it so important that we do?
the ‘correct’ answer to rote exercises. Life for the
By comparison, let’s look at mathematics. Much
teacher, both as instructor and grader, was easy. of the beauty of mathematics stems from its axiom-
That started changing in the early 1980s. The
atic structure and logical development. That same
video series “Against All Odds” appeared, and David
structure facilitates—in fact dictates—the order
Moore and George McCabe published Introduction
in which the material is taught. It also ensures the
to the Practice of Statistics. Since then, two pioneering
course is self-contained, so there are no surprises.
committees—one for the Mathematical Association
But, modern statistics courses are not like that, and
of America and the ASA and one for the National
that can frustrate students who were expecting a
54 AMSTAT NEWS SEPTEMBER 2008
SEPTEMBER AMSTAT FINAL.indd 54 8/20/08 2:27:06 PM
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