The Passion Driven Statistics curriculum introduces students to statistics by allowing them to ask & answer statistical questions that they care about.
Topics come from a large range of disciplines including psychology, sociology, government and environmental science. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Passion Driven Statistics model has been successfully implemented through the Applied Data Analysis course at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.
Students generate hypotheses based on existing data, conduct a literature review, prepare data for analysis, conduct descriptive and inferential statistical analyses, and present research findings to expert and novice audiences. Students also learn to use one of four major statistical analysis software packages (R, SAS, SPSS, and Stata) in order to explore their data. When given freedom to pursue their own questions and appropriate support, all students can meaningfully access the power and promise of statistical inquiry. Read more...
For Students
Is this course really for me? We invite you to explore our interactive graphs to see what students like yourself have said about their experience with the course. Click here. Excerpts from student panel discussion, click here.
For Instructors
An overview of the course was presented as part of Project MOSAIC, a community of educators working to develop a new way to introduce mathematics, statistics, computation and modeling. To listen to this 20-minute M-CAST (recorded 10/21/2011), click here.
