Curriculum & Pedagogy, UBC Faculty of Education

Dear UBC Graduate Students, Research Staff and Faculty:

We are writing to let you know of an opportunity available in Term 2 of 2012-2013. As part of our ongoing efforts to bring current research into the classroom, free statistical analyses will be available this term, from the students enrolled in STAT 450: Case Studies in Statistics. The students will be carrying out this academic activity under the co-supervision of Craig Burkett and Gabriela Cohen Freue. The data will be treated with confidentiality within the course and will be destroyed once the course ends.

Please consider whether the type of feedback described might be helpful to you.  If so, please submit your projects, carefully following the guidelines provided in the announcement below. We have received some projects in response to our fall announcement, however we still have potential for a few more.

Sincerely,

Gabriela Cohen Freue

Craig Burkett

Department of Statistics

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STAT 450, Case Studies in Statistics

TERM 2 of 2012-2013

Research projects from all UBC-affiliated units and all levels of researchers (but particularly undergraduate and graduate students) are welcome.  Research projects requiring primarily advice on appropriate methods of statistical analysis are ideally suited for STAT 450. We may also consider some projects that require a statistician to design the experiment. To allow us to expose the students to a variety of projects in one term, the total time spent on each project has to be limited, so well-focused projects with one or two specific questions to be addressed are most suitable.  The students will identify appropriate approaches to the analysis, carry these out, and provide a report interpreting their results.

If you are uncertain about how best to carry out the statistical analyses for some question arising in your research project and are willing to have others explore your data relevant to that question, you likely have a suitable project for STAT 450.  To take advantage of this unique opportunity to receive free statistical feedback, please submit your project description to us by e-mail (stat450@ugrad.stat.ubc.ca).

A submission of at most one page (as a separate WORD file) is preferred.

Your submission should consist of a concise description of your research problem in non-specialist language, clearly indicating the specific questions for which statistical analyses are desired.  Supplementary material, if essential, can also be provided.  Once your project is approved for STAT 450, you will need to provide the data set as an .xls, .txt, or .csv, with all the variables, including units and coding where relevant, clearly identified. It will often be most efficient to provide this information as a separate data dictionary. The data will be treated with confidentiality within the course and will be destroyed once the course ends.

Once your project is approved, your description will be added to the list from which students will select projects.  The clearer your description, the more likely students are to select your project, so it is to your advantage to submit as clear a description as possible.

If you are willing to come to the STAT 450 class to describe your research project in more detail and to answer questions the students may have, that would be wonderful.  This will be a good opportunity for the student(s) working on your project to ask questions in the course of their work on your project. In addition, the student(s) working on your project will need to meet with you to ask questions and/or provide preliminary results. This will give the students the opportunity to practice and enhance their communication skills and, to your advantage, will result in a better final product.

Undergraduate and graduate students seeking feedback via STAT 450 need the permission of their research supervisor.  An e-mail from the research supervisor at the time of project submission suffices.

If you know others who might be interested in this opportunity, please pass on this information.  Thanks in advance for submitting interesting and challenging projects for the students enrolled in STAT 450 this term.