A way of teaching statistics: An approach to flexible learning

Abstract

Over the past few decades there has been a debate about the reform of statistics education. In particular, many educators are interested in finding a better answer to the question, 'How can students' learning be improved in statistics education?'. Although modern statistics has many visible applications as well as a high demand in employment, students are still moving away from learning statistics. Since the reason for this is not very clear, we must tell the students (and potential students) that statistics forms a strong basis or foundation for many fundamental and experimental studies apart from standing on its own as a discipline. Since most of the theories in statistics are based on mathematics, teaching statistics becomes more difficult than other subjects. Teachers need to find better ways to resolve these difficulties in teaching and answer the common question, 'Why do students need to learn theoretical statistics via mathematics if statistics is supposed to be rich with applications?'. It is, indeed, a very difficult question to answer, i.e. like making a journey in a cart (statistics) without a horse (mathematics).