*cough* who knew blogs could get so dusty? *wheeze*

well, i'm back. please, no applause. thank you.

hereby i shall resurrect my old blog from last year to serve as a model, inspiration, and touchstone for you, my class, whom i have again tasked with starting and keeping your own blogs, where you will comment on your readings, thinkings, analyses, and general development as statisticians. and probably crack a few corny jokes.

i have kept the links to last year's blogs (over on the right side of the page) for the time being so that -- browsing through them -- you can get a sense of what was attempted by last year's students. some were quite successful.

my goals for this project this time around are twofold: first -- to foster introspection, or, as the educational psychologists call it, metacognition. in short: if you have to think about what you're thinking about, you're likely to get more out of thinking about it. that's the idea, anyways. ymmv.

second -- i want to foster discussion. again, for pedagogical reasons, this has important benefits: it builds a sense of community (which is especially important in a challenging class such as this one), and it gives each of you the opportunity to share what you've figured out. you never really know a subject so well as when you've had to teach it to someone else.

at any rate, even if all that fails, it's still better than quizzes.

and you get to crack jokes. e.g.: "97.3% of all statistics are made up."