Teaching Statistical Methods to Undergraduate Economics Students
聚焦经济学本科统计学课程的目标与期望学生掌握的能力，强调学生应能实际运用所学，而非被动接受内容，对经济学教育者和课程设计者有参考价值。
Little published work has appeared on the teaching of statistics in economics. This lack of attention is surprising since John Seigfried and James Wilkinson (1982) found that nearly 85 percent of the 546 schools surveyed required at least one course in statistics for an undergraduate major in economics, and approximately 50 percent of the departments of economics offered their own course. After introductory economics, only intermediate macroeconomics and money and banking have higher enrollments than statistics. This paper focuses on the goals and objectives of the introductory economics statistics course. It also gives attention to the more advanced econometrics courses undergraduates may elect to take.' It emphasizes the quantitative skills all undergraduate majors in economics should possess irrespective of their career plans. As pointed out by W. Lee Hansen (1986), it is much easier to talk about what should be in a course than to define the student competencies to be gained. The latter requires the definition of student activities while the former treats the student as a passive recipient. If students are to do more than regurgitate definitions, duplicate proofs, or perform repetitive computations, then what is expected from them must be specified. Whether an instructor covers something or whether students can actually do something with what is covered are two different issues. This paper focuses on what students should be expected to do, not on what should be in economics statistics courses.