Using Visualisation and E-Learning Tools to Teach Statistical Concepts to Decisionmakers and Policy Planners

Abstract

Statistics is an important tool in turning data into information and knowledge for decision-makers. It uses, but is not mathematics. Marriott et al (2010) stated it is about solving realworld problems. These often involve multidisciplinary teams with the statistician as part of the team but almost never the decision-maker. All members of the team need to understand the underlying statistical concepts, limitations and ‘uncertainties’ (such as data quality, biases and timeliness) associated with their data and analyses and that these data exist only in a given time and place. Statistics is at its most powerful in the real world is when it is treated as a science with repeatability and accumulation of evidence being important. The premise underlying this paper is that data visualisations and e-learning tools can be used not only to teach statisticians, policy developers and other decision-makers important basic statistics concepts but also as motivational and analytical tools demonstrating real-world applications and important policy uses of statistics and to initiate discussions about uncertainties related to the data. This paper gives a range of data visualisations and e-learning tools trialled by the author as teaching aids to help learners see through the mathematics to what is happening in the data.