Math Professor Says Teach Stats Over Calculus

Arthur Benjamin of Harvey Mudd College, a very selective science and math school in Claremont, CA, gave a short three minute talk at TED about why statistics ought to be taught over calculus in America's mathematics curriculum. (Full disclosure: The Kauffman Foundation helps to fund TEDTalks.)

Several popular books in recent years have stressed the point that Professor Benjamin makes. Nassim Taleb's Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets and Ian Ayres's Supercrunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart being the more outstanding and readable examples of this larger trends.

Firms, too, have taken note. Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's Senior VP of Product Management, in a YouTube talk at his alma mater, says that students should aspire to be "data samurais." 

Given this importance, there ought to be some kind of Hippocratic oath for statistians. While failing to do calculus properly can result in a poorly built bridge, failing to do statistics correctly can lead to horrible policies that create perverse and oftentimes completely opposite incentives.

Professor Benjamin is right: It would do wonders for our education system if people understood what a standard deviation is and how to find a mean.

Comments

[Michael F. Martin]

I simply do not get it. Why do we have to choose only one?

[Charles C. Johnson]

We don't. It's just that for most math curricula calculus is the be all and end all. It's clearly not as useful to everyday folks as statistics.

[Dan Weber]

I've got a big bias, but my feeling is that we need to teach stats to the students who aren't studying any calculus.

[Sipag at Tiyaga]

Absolutely! Statistics is more practical and valuable in the real world.

[Michael F. Martin]

How much can you understand about statistics without learning calculus?

I guess I don't get what we're talking about. Are we saying that kids should learn how to compute averages and standard deviations? I thought they already taught that in algebra.

What does "teaching statistics" mean? How can you understand even basic concepts from statistics without calculus?

And why is calculus still considered so hard three-hundred years after it was invented. There is simply nothing mysterious or difficult about calculus. I think we need to get over this whole attitude of mysticism about mathematics.