| The Statistics Education community has, for several years now, advocated the use of real data and compelling examples within the introductory statistics course. Many such courses, particularly those in business and social sciences, cover the construction of surveys as well as the analysis of survey data. Yet, most introductory texts using examples based on surveys perpetuate the illusion that professional survey organizations rely on simple random samples, and then proceed to analyze such data using methods inappropriate to the dataset. With widely-used software, it is a simple matter to (a) apply sampling weights (usually provided with the data) and (b) instruct introductory students in their use. |
Updated 03/19/2014