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Having taught this for forty years and seen so much misuse caused by merely saying significance, I overreact.*

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In Reply to: RE: I would quibble with what you say, but here I would really insist that you say statistical significance. posted by bjh on June 25, 2009 at 21:05:01

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RE: Having taught this for forty years and seen so much misuse caused by merely saying significance, I overreact.* - bjh 08:57:37 06/26/09 (1)
I understand.
However it brings to mind an experience I had in 1st year university. I had this Economics professor who had a way of creating in his student's minds, mine included, a feeling of now understanding how it all works .
But in a class near the end of the semester he shocks us (well he certainly shocked me in any case) by declaring that everything we had learned was essentially incorrect, that as we progressed we'd discover it all to be egregious over-simplification. Yet he added that he still felt that his style of teaching with conviction , as he put it, was the correct way to approach a topic, basically a variation on the theme that one must first crawl to walk and that when at the crawl stage one should concentrate on doing that (alone) to the best of ones' abilities.
I was real life lesson that stuck with me.

Everything matters, don't forget to tweak your placebos!

Edits: 06/26/09
- I used to do what your econ. prof did. I would teach that there of five ways to select judges in the states. - Norm 13:19:48 06/26/09 (0)
  I would outline why each was said to be better. Then I would use data to show they were irrelevant. This is essentially teaching against the textbook.
  
  Now I have written my own text and develop everything from the data themselves. It is still confusing, but for many I get them to think critically. The data show that "merit selection" of judges, where voters merely say whether a judge deserved another term or not does nothing for the quality of justice but does get younger judges and those with degrees from more prestigious law schools.

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