(This article was originally published at Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science, and syndicated at StatsBlogs.)
Stat 6103, Bayesian Data Analysis, TuTh 1-2:30 in room 428 Pupin Hall:
We’ll be going through the book, section by section. Follow the link to see slides and lecture notes from when I taught this course a couple years ago. This course has a serious workload: each week we have three homework problems, one theoretical, one computational, and one applied.
Stat 6191, Statistical Communication and Graphics, TuTh 10-11:30 in room C05 Social Work Bldg:
This is an entirely new course that will be structured around student participation. I’m still working out the details but here’s the current plan of topics for the 13 weeks:
1. Introducing yourself and telling a story
2. Introducing the course
3. Presenting and improving graphs
4. Graphing data
5. Graphing models
6. Dynamic graphics
7. Programming
8. Writing
9. Giving a research presentation
10. Collaboration and consulting
11. Teaching a class
12-13. Student projects
Why am I teaching these courses?
The motivation for the Bayesian Data Analysis class is obvious. There’s a continuing demand for this course, and rightly so, as Bayesian methods are increasingly powerful for a wide range of applications. Now that our book is available, I see the BDA course as having three roles: (1) the lectures serve as a guide to the book, we talk through each section and point to tricky points and further research; (2) the regular schedule of homework assignments gives students a lot of practice applying and thinking about Bayesian methods; and (3) students get feedback from the instructor, teaching assistant, and others in the class.
The idea of the communication and graphics class is that statistics is all about communication to oneself and to others. I used to teach a class on teaching statistics but then I realized that classroom teaching is just one of many communication tasks, along with writing, graphics, programming, and various forms of informal contact. I think it’s important for this class to not be conducted through lectures, or guest lectures, or whatever, but rather as much as possible via student participation.
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