This study examines statistics instructors' use of fun as well as their motivations, hesitations, and awareness of resources. In 2011, a survey was administered to attendees at a national statistics education conference, and follow-up qualitative interviews were conducted with 16 of those ("N" = 249) surveyed to provide further…

The first day of a course has great potential to set the tone for the entire course, planting the seeds for habits of mind and questioning and setting in motion expectations for classroom discourse. Rather than let the first meeting contain little besides going over the syllabus, the instructor (Lesser) decided to use two sustained open-ended…

This paper presents an overview of modalities that can be used to make learning statistics fun. Representative examples or points of departure in the literature are provided for no less than 20 modalities. Empirical evidence of effectiveness specific to statistics education is starting to emerge for some of these modalities--namely, humor, song,…

Despite the dearth of literature specifically on teaching statistics using social justice, there is precedent in the more general realm of teaching using social justice, or even in teaching mathematics using social justice. This article offers an overview of content examples, resources, and references that can be used in the specific area of…

This article describes an innovative curriculum module the first author created on the two-way exchange between statistics and applied ethics. The module, having no particular mathematical prerequisites beyond high school algebra, is part of an undergraduate interdisciplinary ethics course which begins with a 3-week introduction to basic applied…