The two assistant professors co-authored an article with Jessalyn Smith of CTB/McGraw Hill on the use of statistics across all disciplines in the Journal of Statistics Education
Assistant Professors Kirsten Doehler and Laura Taylor of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics co-authored with Jessalyn Smith an article in the Journal of Statistics Education.
The project began at Elon University in Fall 2010 as a study of how faculty perceive and use statistics in both teaching and mentoring undergraduate research projects. In their research, Doehler and Taylor sought to understand the use of statistics across all disciplines through a survey they created, which was refined following the study at Elon University.
The project gained momentum after a poster presentation at the United States Conference on Teaching Statistics in 2011 in Raleigh, N.C. The research project, which highlights the broad use of statistics across disciplines, has been conducted at a total of seven universities and colleges across the Eastern United States and included 747 participants. This study is one of the first of its kind to examine the use of specific statistical tools used in undergraduate research. Based on the feedback from the participants on their use (or lack of use) of statistics and the needs expressed by faculty, the results of the survey may help guide changes in statistics education in order to best serve the needs of client disciplines.
Doehler and Taylor will be presenting their updated findings at the United States Conference on Teaching Statistics in Raleigh, N.C., in May 2013.
The article is available at: http://www.amstat.org/publications/jse/contents_2013.html.