Journalism school to review statistics course requirement

Black Issues in Higher Education, Dec 2, 2004

EVANSTON, ILL.

Many aspiring journalists enter the field for several reasons, often to avoid dealing with numbers. Not so at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, which is assessing options this year to restructure the statistics requirement to make it more applicable for aspiring reporters in response to criticism that current statistics courses are irrelevant or too difficult for many journalism majors, according to the Daily Northwestern.

All Medill students are required to take a quarter of statistics out of the 45 courses needed to graduate. Many opt to take 200-level courses such as "Introduction to Statistics" or "Introductory Statistics for the Social Sciences."

Faculty members are considering the addition of a Medill discussion section for current stats courses, developing a course within the statistics department that would relate to journalism, or creating a separate statistics course that would be taught within Medill. Currently, journalism students take the course within the College of Arts and Sciences.

Rich Gordon, an associate professor and co-chairman of the curriculum committee, says a knowledge of statistical methods such as sampling error, question wording and polling is essential for all journalists.