Reporters, Statistics, and Stories

I'm in LA teaching statistics to education reporters. So far it's been thoroughly enjoyable, interesting, and enlightening.

The reporters are from all over the Western half of the US. They are smart, engaged, interested. I sat with folks from the St. Louis Post and San Jose Mercury News. Terrific people.

What I thought as I listened to their ideas was they they focused a lot on test scores and outcomes, but didn't think as much as about the "how" of these results. How do good test scores occur? What process happens to engender student achievement? And how can you know if the study you are reading actually considers all the problems/possibilities to make those claims?

We'll tackle this later today.

PS> My daughter won the science fair in her middle school, with a project measuring the effect of temperature on chemiluminescence.