Teaching

I have broad experience teaching at the post-secondary level. See below for more details. My general philosophy is that students learn by doing. Where possible, I prefer assignments and projects to examinations. However, I will use exams to check that students understand basic concepts and can explain and demonstrate them on their own.

The course webpage for my most recent offering of STAT 462/862 is here:

STAT 462/862 »

At Queen's

While at Queen's I have had the opportunity to teach two statistics courses:

  1. The introductory statistics course STAT 263. This course is taken by students in arts and science programs as a required introduction to statistics. Students are introduced to basic probability, parameter estimation, hypothesis testing, simple regression, analysis of variance, and simple nonparametric tests. I taught this course during the summer term and as a result it was an online course. There were about 100 students in this course.
  2. The upper-level/graduate statistics course STAT 462/862 on computational data analysis. I have taught this course twice. The original concept for this course was to teach students to use R and SAS. However, the statistics program at Queen's lacks a course on data analysis, so with the blessing of the department I designed a course focused on modern data analysis with complementary instruction on computation. After introducing both R and SAS, I chose to focus on R because I find it to be more intuitive when learning certain data analysis concepts. However, I view software as a tool and I allowed students to work R, SAS, or any environment they preferred. Teaching this course twice allowed me the opportunity to refine the initial offering, and the updated course was very well received by the students. There were about 30 students in this course.

At SFU

At SFU I also taught two courses:

  1. REM 412/612 Simulation Modelling in Natural Resource Management. There was no course webpage, but you can take a look at the syllabus here. There were 15 students in this course.
  2. REM 614 Advanced Methods in Fisheries Assessment. There was no course webpage, but you can take a look at the syllabus here. This course is only taken by REM master's students in fisheries science. Because of the very small class size (five students), the course was part lecture and part seminar / paper discussion.