(This article was originally published at The Endeavour » Statistics, and syndicated at StatsBlogs.)
Russ Roberts had this to say about the proposal to replacing the calculus requirement with statistics for students.
Statistics is in many ways much more useful for most students than calculus. The problem is, to teach it well is extraordinarily difficult. It’s very easy to teach a horrible statistics class where you spit back the definitions of mean and median. But you become dangerous because you think you know something about data when in fact it’s kind of subtle.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, more so for statistics than calculus.
This reminds me of a quote by Stephen Senn:
Statistics: A subject which most statisticians find difficult but in which nearly all physicians are expert.
Related: Elementary statistics book recommendation
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