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16 May 2006

Communication, Anyone?

Jim Greiner

The course I co-taught this semester on Quantitative Social Science & Law has come to an end. There were a lot of “lessons learned” in the class, both for the students (at least, I hope so) and for the teaching staff (more definitely). Of all of these lessons, one sticks in my head: we ought to focus on teaching quantitative students how to communicate with folks without formal statistical training.

Some quantitative folks will graduate and spend the rest of their lives talking to and working with only quantitative people. Some, but not many. Most of us will be talking and working with people who have little or no statistics classes under their belts. But do we ever teach the communication skills needed to function effectively with the proles? I’ve never seen or heard of a class that focuses on these skills. Not one. Does that strike anyone besides me as odd?

Posted by James Greiner at May 16, 2006 6:00 AM