Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

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Also, in all modules, students use commercial statistical software packages in order to
treat the data sets and obtain the statistical measures used to support their decisions.
Some problems found
Taking into account the student surveys and informal interviews with the laboratory
students, carried out over the past two years, these are the main problems found so far
with the ideas and concepts presented and current implementation of the Statistical
Decision-Making Laboratory:
1. The data sets used in the laboratory are not representative of real economic data
set. In the current implementation of the laboratory, the data used are
synthetically generated, only for academic purposes, and thy do not represent real
economic data.
2. In some cases, it is difficult to relate the statistical results with its adequate realworld
interpretation. This is a consequence of the previous problem. For instance,
the result of an hypothesis test “Reject the null hypothesis H0” using non-real
world data are difficult to interpret by the student, which in turn causes a lack of
assimilation of the main concepts and their applicability.
3. The students ask for additional uses of the statistical tools presented in the
Statistical Decision-Making Laboratory to decision problems other than
economical ones. The main focus of thelaboratory is to present examples related to
economics and enterprise problems. The students demand a deeper presentation
of the wide applicability of the methods presented in the laboratory.
Changes proposal
The problems stated in the previous section have served as guidelines to propose some
important changes in the design of the Statistical Decision-Making Laboratory. These
changes are briefly explained in the following paragraphs.
Use of real economic data
It is considered the use of real economic data, in order to predict the behavior of economic
indexes, allowing the students and the teacher to compare the real results of the methods
with the results of the laboratory work. This comparison should be realized in a formal
way, using decision theory principles (hypothesis test methodology).
For instance, the National Statistics Institute in Spain (2011) has a lot of data sets
concerning all economic activities in Spain and it also computes and maintains a lot of
economical indexes used as a reference by many activity sectors in Spain.
In the six modules of the laboratory, the data sets used will be modified, employing new
data sets taken directly from the National Statistics Institute of Spain. Using these data, the
students, for instance in Module 2 (Time Series Analysis), can compute a determined
prediction of an economic magnitude of indexes employing the time series analysis tools
presented in that Module of the Laboratory, and they can compare the predicted value
Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011
Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011