Statistical Thinking: A Core Skill for Career Success
The article “3 core skills to master for career success” in the Fall 2023 issue of ASU Thrive Magazine lists the major skills that employers look for in new graduates:
Critical thinking, which “involves analyzing data or information to find solutions to challenges”;
Innovation, “the ability and process of generating or approaching existing ideas in new ways”;
Resilience, “the ability to bounce back from challenges”
What does Arizona State University’s Career Services team recommend to develop critical thinking? Here’s the quote:
You can exercise this skill by using articles that include graphs or numerical data; practice making sense of the data. What does this data suggest? How can you determine if this data is reliable? How do you find out if the data is free of bias? Then identify a problem that the data might help illuminate. What solutions might the data suggest? (Webber, 2023, p. 18)
Yep. Critical thinking, according to this article, can be developed through practicing statistical reasoning. Webber (2023) suggests looking at data on your own, but there are a number of resources available that provide sound examples of statistical reasoning and can help you develop these skills.
A new book by Stats + Stories podcast hosts John Bailer and Rosemary Pennington is a great place to start. Statistics Behind the Headlines teaches through examples about “statistics and the stories we tell about them.” Each chapter starts with a headline of a news article, followed by an examination of the claims in the news article by statistician Bailer and journalist Pennington. Along the way, the authors introduce the relevant statistical concepts, say how they were applied (or misapplied), and evaluate what the journalist did well and could have done better. Chapter 4 on “Speedy Sneakers,” for example, examines the headline “Researchers say a new Nike shoe can actually make you a faster runner.” Bailer and Pennington dive into the experiments conducted on the shoe, discuss what the experimenters did well and what they might have improved, evaluate the journalist’s presentation of the studies, and bring the reader up to date on developments since the news story was published. Each chapter follows the same general pattern, providing a model for questions to ask when reading news stories on you own. You can listen to the authors reading Chapter 4 on the Stats + Stories podcast.
Statistics Behind the Headlines is in the American Statistical Association series on Statistical Reasoning in Science and Society. Other books in the series include Measuring Society by Chaitra Nagaraja (see my review here), Backseat Driver: The Role of Data in Great Car Safety Debates by Norma Hubele (see my review here), and my book Measuring Crime: Behind the Statistics, which illustrates statistical reasoning through looking at different crime statistics and lists 8 questions you should ask when judging the quality of a statistic.
For more examples, check out other episodes of the weekly Stats + Stories podcast. In most episodes, Bailer and Pennington interview a guest whose work heavily depends on statistics. Recent topics include the history of statistics, the human rights impact of the World Cup, and measuring the impact of universal basic income.
Copyright (c) 2023 Sharon L. Lohr
References
Bailer, A. J. and Pennington, R. (2023). Statistics Behind the Headlines. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Hubele, N. F. (2023). Backseat Driver: The Role of Data in Great Car Safety Debates. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Lohr, S. (2019). Measuring Crime: Behind the Statistics. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Nagaraja, C. (2020). Measuring Society. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Webber, D. (2023). 3 core skills to master for career success. ASU Thrive Magazine, 26(4), 18-21.