We describe the structure, topics, and activities used in teaching a first year seminar course in statistical literacy. This course is entirely structured around current affairs, although common themes emerge that reflect the core material for most quantitative literacy courses. Special emphasis is given to the computing and calculating used in the course to illustrate key concepts. This approach has also had quite a positive impact on our teaching of more advanced courses.

Keywords: Quantitative literacy; Statistics education

Biography: Professor Reid is University Professor and Canada Research Chair in Statistics at the University of Toronto. Her research interests are in likelihood theory and conditional inference, and she has a long-standing interest in statistical literacy. She has taught a first-year seminar course on quantitative literacy for several years. Her co-author Professor Plante is Assistant Professor at HEC in Montréal, with research interests in weighted likelihood methods and in meta-analysis. He co-taught a statistical literacy course with Professor Reid, and they have prepared a paper summarizing their experiences, along with a number of computer-based presentations.