Teaching Introductory Statistics with DataCamp

We designed a sequence of courses for the DataCamp online learning platform that approximates the content of a typical introductory statistics course. We discuss the design and implementation of these courses and illustrate how they can be successfully integrated into a brick-and-mortar class. We reflect on the process of creating content for online consumers, ruminate on the pedagogical considerations we faced, and describe an R package for statistical inference that became a by-product of this development process. We discuss the pros and cons of creating the course sequence and express our view that some aspects were particularly problematic. The issues raised should be relevant to nearly all statistics instructors. Supplementary materials for this article are available online

Infer: An R Package for Tidyverse-Friendly Statistical Inference

infer implements an expressive grammar to perform statistical inference that adheres to the tidyverse design framework (Wickham et al., 2019). Rather than providing methods for specific statistical tests, this package consolidates the principles that are shared among common hypothesis tests and confidence intervals into a set of four main verbs (functions), supplemented with many utilities to visualize and extract value from their outputs

Sexually Coercive Male Chimpanzees Sire More Offspring

SummaryIn sexually reproducing animals, male and female reproductive strategies often conflict [1]. In some species, males use aggression to overcome female choice [2, 3], but debate persists over the extent to which this strategy is successful. Previous studies of male aggression toward females among wild chimpanzees have yielded contradictory results about the relationship between aggression and mating behavior [4–11]. Critically, however, copulation frequency in primates is not always predictive of reproductive success [12]. We analyzed a 17-year sample of behavioral and genetic data from the Kasekela chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) community in Gombe National Park, Tanzania, to test the hypothesis that male aggression toward females increases male reproductive success. We examined the effect of male aggression toward females during ovarian cycling, including periods when the females were sexually receptive (swollen) and periods when they were not. We found that, after controlling for confounding factors, male aggression during a female’s swollen periods was positively correlated with copulation frequency. However, aggression toward swollen females was not predictive of paternity. Instead, aggression by high-ranking males toward females during their nonswollen periods was positively associated with likelihood of paternity. This indicates that long-term patterns of intimidation allow high-ranking males to increase their reproductive success, supporting the sexual coercion hypothesis. To our knowledge, this is the first study to present genetic evidence of sexual coercion as an adaptive strategy in a social mammal

Response: C-RDB

Response to Commentaries

Response: C-RDB

Response to Commentaries

OpenIntro Statistics: an Open-source Textbook

The traditional textbook is a familiar and useful tool that has served well for centuries.  Here, we discuss OpenIntro Statistics, a new textbook that seeks to retain the long-standing points of excellence among traditional textbooks, while overcoming what is potentially the most important traditional limitation: exclusivity.  OpenIntro Statistics is a completely open-source textbook, which can be downloaded for free and edited by anybody.  Its content meets the highest established standards, and is is written, edited, and reviewed by faculty from leading universities.  In this paper, we provide support for the assertion that OpenIntro Statistics retains as many of the advantages of a traditional textbook as possible, while empowering the largest possible audience to owna nd edit introductory content in statistics.  We also discuss how the open-source textbook model differs from other technologically enabled alternatives to the traditional textbook, and consider trends in the textbook over the coming years