Carnegie Mellon Course Dissects Statistics about Sexual Orientation

Autor/in	Keller, Josh
Titel	Carnegie Mellon Course Dissects Statistics about Sexual Orientation
Quelle	In: Chronicle of Higher Education, 53 (2007) 23, (1 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0009-5982
Schlagwörter	Statistics; Sexual Orientation; Homosexuality; Meta Analysis; Popular Culture; Mass Media; Social Attitudes; Social Sciences + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Statistik; Sexuelle Orientierung; Homosexualität; Meta-analysis; Metaanalyse; Popkultur; Massenmedien; Social attidude; Soziale Einstellung; Social science; Sozialwissenschaften; Gesellschaftswissenschaften
Abstract	Most statistics courses emphasize the power of statistics. Michele DiPietro's course focuses on the failures. Gay and lesbian studies are certainly fertile ground for bad guesses and unreliable statistics. The most famous number, that 10 percent of the population is gay, was taken from a biased Kinsey sample of white men ages 16 to 55 in 1948, and referred to sexual history rather than orientation, says Mr. DiPietro. Another oft-repeated statistic, that gay people die at 40, was taken from a study that culled haphazardly from newspaper obituaries, he says. Mr. DiPietro says he aims to teach "epistemological pessimism": how to not trust any study, no matter how official looking or frequently cited. To that end, Mr. DiPietro has students analyze famous studies on gay people. Students look at articles in the popular media, and how they distort studies (for an example, he cites a 2005 "New York Times" headline: "Gay, Straight, or Lying?"). He asks students to use statistics to begin to answer questions like: What causes homosexuality? Can gays change their sexual orientation? Is there such thing as "gaydar"? Mr. DiPietro says the course combines his jobs as a statistics instructor and an assistant director at a teaching center. "If you're an English major taking a statistics class," he says, "I wanted to make a point that statistics has something to say about very important societal issues." (ERIC).
Anmerkungen	Chronicle of Higher Education. 1255 23rd Street NW Suite 700, Washington, DC 20037. Tel: 800-728-2803; e-mail: circulation@chronicle.com; Web site: http://chronicle.com/
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10