Dollars and Sense: Convincing Students That They Can Learn and Want to Learn Statistics.

The article presents a teaching technique designed to motivate students to learn statistics. The author gives students a list of common occupations for people with a degree in Sociology, their salaries, and the use of statistics in the occupation. The goals of this technique is to convince students that statistics is a worthwhile subject to learn, to reduce student anxiety by letting them demonstrate that they can do statistics, and to provide an example that can be used throughout the semester to illustrate multiple statistical techniques. The approach simply acknowledges that money matters to students. It uses the promise of monetary reward to give them at least one reason to pay attention and learn throughout the rest of the course.