How to teach sensible elementary statistics to lower-division undergraduates?
I wonder if we aren&#x27;t going about this a bit wrong.<p>As much as <i>I</i> love learning about the nuts and bolts of statistics, would the general populace not be better of learning the basics of why (experiment design, independence, covariance, etc) and then the basics of how augmented with tools like probability toolkits that do the math for you?<p>Because, honestly, the math in statistics can be boring and error prone. I&#x27;d much rather a population capable of setting up experiments and using the right abstractions and then using a calculator for it.<p>And as much as I want to strive for greater mathematical literacy, perhaps that should be sought independently elsewhere. Diving too deep into the math might impede understanding of statistics.<p>Of course, I don&#x27;t know where or how you draw the line on who should be taught what...<p>I&#x27;d also tend towards Bayesian approaches too (p-hacking - or equivalents-;is of course still possible, but there are presentations of results (i.e., probability distributions of a result value) which make hacking to an arbitrary value less tempting) which does tend to have a bit more complicated math past the first introduction.