Talking social justice in intro stats Silas Bergen

Talking social justice in intro stats Silas Bergen Winona State University JSM 2015, Seattle, WA 1

Why talk social justice? 2

How to talk social justice? 3

What happens next? 4

There is an emerging body of evidence that suggests that social justice examples support student engagement. TSSJ would include students developing a sense of empowerment to be able to use statistics to “talk back” to or change the world. [S]omething done even just in a small dose can still be thing that is most memorable or transformative from a course. 5

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Stat 210 evaluations, Fall 2014: The thing I liked most about the course was… • Applying what we learned back to real-life cases • Real world examples and applications • Assignments/notes that analyzed data sets relevant to current events/topics • Seeing statistics in real-life situations 8

Stat 210 evaluations, Fall 2014: Any additional suggestions/comments… • There were some moments that I felt really uncomfortable with some of the problems and talking about them. • More appropriate topic for homework avoid uncomfortable topic such as racist statistics. • Don’t use such controversial topics. • Give less of white vs black and babies. 9

Life-Course Theory in North Carolina Michael C. Lu, MD, MPH and Neal Halfon, MD, MPH, “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Birth Outcomes: A Life-Course Perspective, ” Maternal and Child Health Journal 7, no. 1 (March 2003): 13– 30, http: //mchb. hrsa. gov/infantmortalitysummit/disparitieslifecourse. pdf. 10

• Data: • North Carolina Birth Data (Via the NC Vital Statistics Dataverse) • American Community Survey (ACS), subset of NC residents (via the U. S. Census Bureau’s Data. Web) 11

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Reflection questions (extra credit) • What are the racial stereotypes we hold in our heads? What are things we think but don’t say? • What would happen if we respectfully discussed our thoughts on and questions about different ethnic groups in a multiethnic setting? What would you ask? What would you say? • In what ways has your racial/ethnic background shaped your current values, habits, practices, and personal priorities? • Can racial inequity ever be eradicated? If so, how? • What steps can you take to check against any deep-rooted, perhaps subconscious, prejudices against people of other races, sexual orientations, or religions? 13

Suspensions at Winona Senior High 14

Suspensions at Winona Senior High Office of Civil Rights: http: //ocrdata. ed. gov 15

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1. Write 3 -4 sentences summarizing your findings, as if you were reporting them to a WSHS administrator or at a parent-teacher meeting. What “action steps” might you recommend to school administrators and teachers as a result of your findings? 2. What do you think about using suspension as a method of disciplining bad behavior? 18

What’s next? • Compile list of more resources; from Lesser: • JSE Data Archive (www. amstat. org/publications/jse_data_archive. html) • “Simpson’s Paradox: An Example from a Longitudinal Study in South Africa” • “The Statistics of Poverty and Inequality” • “Getting What You Pay For: The Debate Over Equity in Public School Expenditures” • Expand to upper-level classes 19

TSSJ in upper-level classes: Discrimination by the CA Department of Developmental Services? • Stat 310 (Intermediate statistics) take-home final exam • DSCI 310 (Data visualization) assignment 20

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Visualizing gender income inequity with ACS data 25

Visualizing gender income inequity with ACS data 26

Visualizing gender income inequity with ACS data 27

Larry Lesser webinar: “It can be very helpful to attend conferences and workshops on this topic and the networking and dialogue can continue even afterwards” (that’s you!) 28

Thank you! sbergen@winona. edu http: //course 1. winona. edu/sbergen/resources 29

New tenure-track position in statistics/data science starting Fall 2016 30