Last Friday I gave another session of Statistics for Journalists; the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills funded scheme coordinated by the Royal Statistical Society, this time in London City University. It didn’t exactly run to plan.
We were expecting to have only an hour with a bunch of MA students to try to explain the basics of statistics. This, in reality by they time they are settled in, would have been more like 45 minutes. I ran this session with two other statisticians (London based).
We were most rudely interrupted by a fire alarm that meant that we didn’t have an opportunity for a proper Q and A session nor did we quite get through all of the planned material – today’s “Statistics for Journalists” course went quite well. We were allowed to run slightly over, but still lost about 10 minutes due to the disruption, so had under 40 minutes with the students.
Disappointingly, we didn’t get to cover relative risk – but we did leave the slides with their lecturer so that hopefully the more interested students will use them for some targeted learning.
What would I have changed? Honestly, at this point, not much – although it’s the second time I’ve seen the “traffic camera” exercise being run and students have not really engaged with it. I think that I would need to have a rethink about how to present this is exercise if I lead it. It definitely needs more time that has been given to it in previous sessions.
On a more positive note, the feedback from students is good – with them more aware of some of the common pitfalls that they need to be aware of in their professional careers. They also now know the difference between a percentage and a percentage point! They have also stated that they will be more sceptical about statistics in the future…
To be decided 