MESA REDONDA: "LA ENSEÑANZA DE LA ESTADÍSTICA EN LA FORMACIÓN DE PROFESIONALES"

Organiser Maria Gabriella Ottaviani, IASE, University of Rome "La

Sapienza", Italy

The importance of bridging the gaps between statistics education, statistics practice and the general use of statistics in the workplace has become the concern of a growing number of statistical educators as well as of those institutions in which the knowledge of statistics and its concepts are needed for the successful implementation of their work programme. In fact, statistical knowledge has become increasingly important to many professionals from non-mathematical backgrounds such as psychologists, sociologists and people trained in education, business, politics, agricultural, biological and health sciences. Also researchers from a large number of fields often need to corroborate their results with statistical evidence, or at least understand journal articles which use statistical methods and language. Besides this, the trend towards increased monitoring of workplace performance, and the use of quality assurance programs, has led to need for more people to be involved in utilising statistical techniques and in writing reports which often involve their use.

These premises made, the Round Table should develop according to the following points:

· which are the main objectives that the teaching of statistics to professionals in your field should attain (and /or which is the role of statistics reflected in teaching professionals in your field);

· which methods should be used to prepare these professionals (in particular which amount of mathematics do you think is it necessary);

· which is the role of computers and new technologies in teaching professionals.

After the organiser's introduction (5 minutes), each speaker should present his/her experiences and his/her opinions according to the proposed scheme. Each presentation should last 15 minutes.

Slides and transparencies can be used. May be it is useful for you to know that the auditorium at our disposal has projection equipment (power point for example)

At the end of the speakers' presentations, the discussion will be opened to the floor for questions (about 20 minutes).

As the Proceedings of the Conference are foreseen, each of you is kindly requested to prepare a short summary of his/her presentation, no longer than one A4 page.