Teaching Statistical Principles Using Epidemiology

Abstract

Recent developments in education have addressed the need to expand and enhance the teaching of statistics and mathematics throughout education (K–16) to improve the statistical literacy and scientific reasoning of students. Nonetheless, many students perceive the statistics instruction contained in mathematics and science courses as unrelated to decisions in their lives, and data show that students in the United States lag behind students in other parts of the world in mathematics and science achievement. In this article we argue that epidemiology, the scientific basis for public health, provides a useful and motivating context for teaching statistical principles and methods and suggest that examples from this and other public health sciences be used in the teaching of mathematics and science courses in high school and college. First, we describe resources developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to aid in implementing epidemiology in statistics education, and present evaluative evidence of the effectiveness of these resources when implemented at the high school level. Next, we illustrate how these resources address selected college mathematics and high school statistics education standards. Finally, we show how teaching statistics in the context of epidemiology responds directly to several current initiatives in statistics and mathematics education.