We present the process our institution used to create a statistics requirement for almost all incoming first-year students. From conception and planning, to hiring and acceptance by the university community, we offer lessons learned should you consider making such a shift in your own curriculum.

We argue for decreasing the use of the word "spread" when describing the statistical idea of dispersion or variability in introductory statistics courses. In addition, we argue for increasing the use of the word "variability" as a replacement for "spread."

We describe an activity that allows students to experience the full process of a statistical investigation, from generating the research question, to collecting data and testing a hypothesis. Implementation of the activity is described both with and without use of clickers, handheld remotes that allow instant data collection.

Data from a cough challenge study are displayed with dot charts to demonstrate the importance of graphs in understanding data, principles of graph construction and visual perception. The data are available for use in the classroom.

This article provides an easy derivation of updating formulae for the sample covariance and, by extension, for the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient.

We establish an interesting connection between the number of runs and the length of the first run when tossing a fair coin.

This article presents engaging interactive hypothesis tests which can be conducted with students very efficiently.

In this article, we discuss a collection of active learning activities derived from classic psychology studies that illustrate the appropriate use of descriptive and inferential statistics. (Contains 2 tables.)

An in-class activity is described that can be used not only to motivate hypothesis testing, but also to understand and compute the p-value and power in a statistical test. (Contains 3 figures.)

Practical project work based on eBay selling prices is described. It is suitable for secondary school students of a wide range of statistical expertise and it may be used to introduce a statistical package. (Contains 4 figures and 5 tables.)

We describe an approach to teaching probability that minimizes the amount of class time spent on the topic while also providing a meaningful (dice-rolling) activity to get students engaged. The activity, which has a surprising outcome, illustrates the basic ideas of informal probability and how probability is used in statistical inference.…

The need to encourage "what if" questions for statistical thinking in a classroom environment is stressed in this article. (Contains 1 figure and 3 tables.)

This article tackles the problem of what should be done with real textual data that are contaminated by errors of recording, particularly when the data contain words that are misspelt, unintentionally or otherwise. (Contains 5 tables and 2 figures.)

This article advocates biased spinners as an engaging context for statistics students. Calculating the probability of a biased spinner landing on a particular side makes valuable connections between probability and other areas of mathematics. (Contains 2 figures and 1 table.)

This article illustrates using carbon emissions data in an introductory statistics assignment. The carbon emissions data has desirable characteristics including: choice of measure; skewness; and outliers. These complexities allow research and public policy debate to be introduced. (Contains 4 figures and 2 tables.)