Teaching Statistics: A Bag of Tricks

Author and political scientist is one of the foremost statisticians in the social sciences . . . anywhere. This book may be of little interest to people who are advanced in their study of the social sciences, but anyone who expects to teach or who would like a great array of intuitively appealing ways to learn more about statistics will likely find this book outstanding. Thorough and comprehensive, but not especially technical. This book is very much aimed at the teaching of statistics. Gelman is particularly good at clarifying common misconceptions and mistakes that even fairly advanced students and practitioners make.

While there are a number of interesting points made by the authors, this revised edition merely adds chapters to the text without making important revisions to make this a worthwhile purchase. The really bad: 1. Even though this revised edition was printed in 2017, the vast majority of news articles referenced are from the mid 90's. 2. The authors provide anecdotal evidence justifying various classroom activities, when such activities seem difficult to implement in practice. *Example: The book claims that the activities are suitable for high school and college students.. It claims that students would be excited about guessing people's ages. Oddly enough, my reservations about implementing this activity in a college classroom are confirmed later in the book when they show a picture of 8th graders completing the activity!* 3. The authors did not put enough time in updating this work. E.g They advocate for the use of projectors in the classroom. 4. The authors criticize teachers that use examples directly from the course text, but then make cliche recommendations, such as the use of the distribution of heights as a motivating activity. The good: 1. I did find some of the discussions of activities insightful. While I certainly would find myself disagreeing with the set up of the activities (e.g Benford's law), I did find that they were good starting points for developing my own activities. 2. They lowered the price for this 'revised edition'. 3. There are some nice references and interesting examples for class discussion. (e.g The maps for rates of cancer in the U.S). The verdict: If you are looking to expand your repertoire of activities, then this textbook could be a worthwhile investment. But in general, the book in its current form suffers too much from dubious or outdated advice.

I cannot bring myself to believe that a flipped classroom will ever anything but a waste of time (especially, if you have a nontrivial agenda). So I am always open to demonstrations and strategies that are well-tested and clearly carefully selected. I find reading the authors' suggestions before lecturing on a topic and is most useful for getting a perspective on ideas students historically stumble on. Well done.

This is a fabulous collection of ideas and activities to incorporate into a modern introductory or more advanced statistics or data science course. Many gems have been collected and made accessible to a broader set of instructors. New material has been added for the second addition with particular focus on data science education.

Great activities and organization. Brilliant stuff