Letter from the Chair

Carolyn Cuff, Westminster College
SIGMAA on Statistics Education

August 20, 2003


SIGMAA StatEd members,

As we start a new school year, I thought I'd send you some information I have found useful.  This is a lengthy e-mail but the topics are listed below and the details given in the body of the e-mail allowing you to skip the details you aren't interested in.  I hope you have a good school year and even better students!  I expect to write again in October with more information about the Phoenix meeting.  If you reply to this message, please do so to me directly and not to the list as a whole.

Best wishes,
Carolyn Cuff,
Chair of SIGMAA StatEd



1. Phoenix MAA meeting
   a.  Contributed paper session entitled Discourse on Inference, details of submission procedures in the body of the message
   b.  Panel Discussion on the undergraduate mathematical statistics sequence
2. New officers -  nominations needed
3.  Information available through the American Statistical Association www.amstat.org  Direct links to each of the following sections are found in the body of this e-mail.  The education section of the ASA is quite active and has produced the following
   a.  Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Programs in Statistical Science
   b.  Undergraduate Statistical Education Initiative
   c.  Publications of Interest for Statistics Educators
   d.  Web sites of interest for Statistics Educators



1a.  Submission Procedures for MAA Contributed Papers

Send a detailed one-page summary of your paper by email directly to John McKenzie at mckenzie@babson.edu no later than September 9, 2003; concurrently, submit your abstract directly to the AMS (see below for instructions). In order to enable us to evaluate the appropriateness of
your paper, include as much detailed information as possible within the one-page summary limitation. The AMS will publish abstracts for MAA talks. These will be available online about two months before the meeting, and paper copy will be available onsite to registered participants. Electronic submission is available via the Internet or email. No technical knowledge of is necessary for submission; however, and are the only typesetting systems that can be used if display mathematics is used or special formatting is desired. To see descriptions and to view the electronic templates available, visit the abstracts submission page at http://www.ams.org/abstracts/instructions.html, or send email to:abs-submit@ams.org, typing HELP as the subject line. All questions concerning the submission of abstracts should be addressed to abs-coord@ams.org. The EVENT CODE for our contributed paper session is MAA CP N1. The SUBJECT CODE is N1.



1b.  SIGMAA StatEd is sponsoring a panel discussion in Phoenix on Thursday January 8, 2004, 2:40 p.m.-4:00 p.m. The undergraduate mathematical statistics sequence.
Organizer: Carolyn K. Cuff, Westminster College
Panelists: Matthew J. Hassett, ASA, AdvancePCS
Elliot A. Tanis, Hope College
Douglas A. Wolfe, The Ohio State University
Deborah Nolan, University of California Berkeley
Moderator: Allan J. Rossman, California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo



2.  New officers will be elected at the end of the calendar year.  The officers needed this year are Chair-Elect, and treasurer.  If you are
interested in standing for election for either of these two positions please submit your name to Mary Sullivan, Past Chair at
mmsullivan@ric.edu.  Voting is done via e-mail.  Members may request a paper ballot from Mary Sullivan.



3a.  Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Programs in Statistical Science
The American Statistical Association endorses the value of undergraduate programs in statistical science, both for statistical
science majors and for students in other majors seeking a minor or concentration. This document provides guidelines for development of
curricula for such programs http://www.amstat.org/education/Curriculum_Guidelines.html



3b.  Statistics Educators gathered several summers ago and created a vision of the Undergraduate Statistics Education Initiative (USEI)
stated as:
To create opportunities for students to avail themselves of sound undergraduate educational programs in quantitative reasoning.
To give a broad quantitative foundation for further study in specialized disciplines.
To increase quantitative literacy within the modern workforce.

More details can be found at http://www.amstat.org/education/usei.html



3c.  Publications

ASA has three publications of interest to the statistics educator. Journal of Statistical Education is a peer reviewed electronic journal
with datasets, articles describing their use in the classroom, activities, and general interest articles. http://www.amstat.org/publications/jse/

Chance is a magazine/journal primarily geared to the undergraduate professor and undergraduate students of statistics.
http://www.amstat.org/publications/chance/

Stats is geared towards undergraduate students.
http://www.amstat.org/publications/stats/



3d.  Websites for the educator

Web site for American Statistical Association Education Section
http://www.stat.ncsu.edu/stated/

Useful web sites for teachers of statistics
http://www.amstat.org/education/web4teachers.html

Research on statistical education
http://www.stat.ucla.edu/~jsanchez/statsedu.html



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