This paper reviews the potential role of writing textbooks in increasing our understanding of academic writing. It argues that this role is underappreciated for several reasons. These include the dampening effects of existing discoursal and social-constructionist accounts of introductory college textbooks, a reluctance to look beyond the ostensible student audience, and a diffidence in recogniz...

Citation: Anderson ND (2015) Teaching signal detection theory with pseudoscience. The Utility of Signal Detection Theory Signal detection theory (SDT) is a technique that can be used to evaluate sensitivity in decision-making. Initially developed by radar researchers in the early 1950s (Peterson et al., 1954), the value of SDT was quickly recognized by cognitive scientists and adapted for appli...

A prominent issue in statistics education is the sometimes large disparity between the theoretical and the computational coursework. discreteRV is an R package for manipulation of discrete random variables which uses clean and familiar syntax similar to the mathematical notation in introductory probability courses. The package offers functions that are simple enough for users with little experi...

Previous research has demonstrated that the experience of reading e-books is not equivalent to reading textbooks. This study examines factors influencing preference for e-books as well as reported use of e-book content. Although the present student cohort is the most technologically savvy to ever enter universities, students do not prefer e-books over textbooks regardless of their gender, compu...

Background There are surprisingly few resources available which offer an introductory guide to preparing a national population projection using cohort-component model. Many demography textbooks cover projections quite briefly, and many academic papers on focus advanced technical issues.
 Aims The aim of this paper is provide short accessible producing national-scale the model.
 Data m...

This article discusses several erroneous claims which appear in textbooks on numerical methods and computational physics. These are not typos or mistakes an individual author has made, but widespread misconceptions. In attempt to stop these issues from further propagating, we discuss them here, along with some background comments. each case, also provide a correction, is aimed at summarizing ma...

Elementary Concepts in Statistics Overview of Elementary Concepts in Statistics. In this introduction, we will briefly discuss those elementary statistical concepts that provide the necessary foundations for more specialized expertise in any area of statistical data analysis. The selected topics illustrate the basic assumptions of most statistical methods and/or have been demonstrated in resear...

Graphical User Interface (GUI) has become a common way to build and deploy desk-top software in introductory computer science courses. Students definitely enjoy building GUI programs as opposed to command-line programs. Writing a GUI program requires a paradigm shift from sequential processing to event-driven processing. Building a GUI program involves two main activities – design of user inter...