Teaching statistics like a literature class
I’m teaching a graduate class in statistics. The semester is almost over and I’m teaching a topic not included in our textbook. I wanted to use a book that I believe is one of the best on the subject, but it’s too hard for the students to read on their own. I thought about using a more accessible text, but instead I decided to guide them though the difficult book.
I copied the first few pages of the advanced book and passed them out. We’re going through these pages line-by-line the way a literature class might go through a difficult passage from Milton. I provide lots of commentary. We have discussions. We go on tangents. But we have a text to return to that keeps us on track. So far I believe this experiment in applying classical pedagogy to advanced statistics is working well.
