Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll, and Statistics
by
Judi McWhirter
University Of Waikato
Coauthors: Dr Bill Bolstad (University of Waikato), Dr Lyn Hunt (University of Waikato)

For many students, the only contact they have with statistics, is in the first year service course. Often this is a compulsory requirement as part of their chosen course of study. In our instruction, we need to capture the student's attention, to dispel the myth about the need for a strong mathematical background and to motivate the learning of statistical thinking.

A comment frequently heard is that these service courses would be more interesting if students had their own data set to analyse. In the past we have conducted surveys collecting such information as height, weight, shoe size and so on, but these are not seen as particularly exciting. We have also encountered situations where individual student information is easily identifiable, with embarrassing repercussions for those unfortunate students who feature as outliers.

We recognise that sex, drugs and rock & roll are topics that arouse almost universal interest among students. We harness this interest in the service of teaching statistical concepts. We have designed a randomised response survey, where each student does his/her own randomisation using a pair of coloured dice. Before the collection of the data, and in the context of the survey, the students are encouraged to consider what constitutes a sample and a population and how bias from false information and self-selection may influence the results. They see how randomisation removes the motivation to lie; how the knowledge of the underlying probability structure allows the estimation of parameters of the class such as the distribution of the number of sex partners and also marijuana usage proportions.

In this paper, we will discuss the mechanisms of the survey and also give anecdotal evidence of the success we believe we are having with the use of this as a tool for developing statistical thinking.

Date received: August 15, 2000

Copyright © 2000 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # cadt-16.