V. N. Vimal Rao
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“Thinking like a scientist involves more than just reacting with an open mind. It means being actively open-minded.” Adam Grant
Towards the end of my graduate schooling, I was at a department party and found myself chatting with a first-year student about their research interests. At one point I noticed a chain that they were wearing, and asked them about it. They reacted shyly, almost embarrassed that I had noticed. The chain included a religious symbol. I asked them about how their beliefs inform their research interests, and they seemed surprised at the question. They simply responded, “I’m not sure religion and science have much in common.”
As a child of immigrants, I grew up in the United States perceived as a ‘hyphenated’ American. As a child, I often saw two versions of myself – the ‘American’ version that most people saw, and a second almost secret version disclosed with family or at cultural events. As an adult, I’m too tired to pretend to be anything other than fully me in everything that I do.
It is in this spirit that I firmly disagree with my friend that religion and science do not have much in common. If you are both religious and scientific, then they have everything in common – they have you in common.
It is with this value that one of my projects draws inspiration from. I am Hindu. I enjoy reading and learning about the BhagavadGita and other Vedantic works. In the spirit of being fully me – an educational psychologist and a Hindu – I realized that I could borrow pedagogical insights from the BhagavadGita to help me teach my students Statistics.
It might seem odd at first to think that modern psychological and educational research can learn a thing or two from religion. But let’s think about it as psychologists:
- Many religions have existed for centuries;
- They typically include something of a benchmark set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices;
- They have encoded into their systems various pedagogies to support the propagation of these attitudes, beliefs, and practices; and
- These religious instructional systems have existed for far longer than psychological (or statistical) pedagogies.
Clearly, religion is doing something right in terms of their pedagogical strategies to be able to last centuries. We would be remiss to not at least consider religious pedagogies as potentially viable strategies for our educational objectives.
In the case of the BhagavadGita, religious instruction is presented as a dialogue between a student (Arjuna) and a teacher (Krishna). Krishna is hailed as jagadguru, meaning ‘teacher of the world,’ a title bestowed to those teachers whose teachings have worldly impact. While I do not teach the same content as Krishna, surely I can study a jagadguru’s pedagogical strategies.
The Structure of the BhagavadGita
The BhagavadGita is set within the great epic Mahabharata. Specifically, it occurs immediately prior to the outbreak of a war between two sides of a ruling family. In Chapter 1 of the BhagavadGita, Arjuna asks Krishna (who is serving as Arjuna’s charioteer) to take him in front of the opposing army. Arjuna then sees his grandfather, his teachers, and many friends and relatives lined up with the opposing army, and has a crisis of conscience. Arjuna finds himself confused, anxious, and hopeless. It is from this despondence that Arjuna bows to Krishna, pleading for Krishna’s help.
Chapter 1 of the BhagavadGita is thus titled “Arjuna Vishada Yoga,” or “Arjuna’s despondency.” Throughout this entire chapter, Krishna stays silent. It is only after Arjuna seeks Krishna’s help, at the start of Chapter 2, that Krishna begins his instruction.
The implication is clear, and is similar to the old English proverb that ‘You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.’ Arjuna would not have been ready or willing to receive Krishna’s instruction prior to experiencing confusion and anxiety. Those feelings created the motivation necessary for Arjuna to steadfastly receive Krishna’s instruction, and earnestly imbibe it into his being. For Krishna’s teachings to have had any effect, Arjuna needed to be ready to do three things: devotedly listen, reflect and contemplate on the teachings, and assimilate the knowledge into his being. Krishna knew Arjuna was ready to do these things only after Arjuna asked for Krishna’s help.
My Class
I teach a very large (500-700 students per section) general education introductory level statistics course. My students are not STEM majors. Most of them take my class because they have to – 99% of 602 students (out of 1019) from the Spring 2024 semester indicated on a survey that they took the course because it was either a major requirement or they were fulfilling a general education requirement. If it weren’t for those requirements, I might not have a course to teach.
Consider these students’ motivation. Do they plan to devotedly listen to the content, reflect and contemplate on it, and assimilate statistical thinking into their lives? Do they perceive any need to actually learn statistics? With few exceptions, the answer is no[1]. Prior to Arjuna asking Krishna for help, Krisha stayed silent. My students do not walk into my class because they think they need my help. Following Krishna’s example implies that I too should stay silent.
Despite staying silent, Krishna still played an important role in setting the stage for Arjuna’s desire to learn. When Arjuna asked Krishna to drive closer to the opposing army, Krishna could have driven anywhere. However, Krishna chose to drive right in front of Arjuna’s grandfather. By doing so, Krishna created the setting from which Arjuna’s plight would manifest, thereby increasing Arjuna’s motivation to learn and providing the opportunity for instruction.
Like Krishna taking Arjuna right in front of his grandfather, I too decided that I could create an environment to set the stage for students to develop motivation to learn statistics. To achieve this, I would eschew discussing the syllabus until Day 2, and instead spend Day 1 on telling a series of stories that require statistical thinking to resolve, hoping that students might relate to one, be unable to solve it, and thus develop a desire to learn statistics.
On Day 1, I tell my students seven different stories, one for each of the content units in the course. Here, I will retell the last of the seven stories I tell my students. This is a true story.
My Day 1 Story
It was a warm August night in Chicago. My grandfather was in the hospital, Day 3 of the current hospitalization due to dizziness and dehydration. The hospital only allowed visitors until 8 p.m., and as I was about to leave, the night nurse came in with some medication for my grandfather.
The nurse had a pill for my grandfather’s hypertension – he had high blood pressure. I asked what my grandfather’s most recent blood pressure was. “110,” the nurse told me.
110!? That was not normal for my grandfather. My grandfather measured his blood pressure every morning. He would complete his shower, get dressed, come to the dining room table, comb his hair, pray, measure his blood pressure and pulse, take his medications, and then only begin eating his breakfast.
I had spent the last year with him, bearing witness to the BP cuff beeping, inflating, and slowly deflating before giving my grandfather the data for the day, which he recorded in a notebook. Standing in the hospital, talking to the night nurse, I could not remember a single day that my grandfather’s blood pressure was as low as 110.
I told the nurse that 110 was lower than my grandfather’s typical blood pressure. The nurse explained that they always give the medicine if a patient’s blood pressure is above 130, and won’t give it if the blood pressure is below 100, but when the patient’s blood pressure is between 100-130, it’s at the nurse’s discretion, but they typically give the medication anyway.
With a blood pressure of 110, did my grandfather really need the medication? I didn’t think so, but the nurse did. If I was wrong and he really did need the medicine, his blood pressure would skyrocket overnight, and he would crash. If, on the other hand, we gave him the medicine but he really didn’t need it, his blood pressure would plummet overnight, and he would crash.
How would you make a decision about whether to give the medication or not? Would you feel confident about the decision you were making? Would you simply relinquish decision making power and allow the nurse to do whatever they think, even though you know your family best?
I decided to tell the nurse not to give the medicine, and I felt confident my decision was correct. Despite no medical training, I felt confident because I approached the problem by thinking statistically, and statistically, the answer was clear.
You are in this class to learn how to think statistically. You are in this class to learn how to apply statistical thinking to the decisions you make in your life. You are in this class because statistics is the science of variability and decision making under uncertainty, and by thinking statistically, you will be better able to navigate the uncertainty you will undoubtedly face in your lives.
You are in this class so that I can teach you how to think just like me if you ever have to face a situation in a hospital room like I did with my grandfather, and do so calmly and confidently.
Students’ Reactions to the Story
When I tell this story to my students on Day 1, I do not tell them my solution. My goal is to get my students to imagine themselves in the scenario, and to think about what they would do. I simply tell them that I know statistics, and that statistics allowed me to calmly make a decision without anxiety, without helplessness, and without despondence. If they find the situation stressful or unnerving, then they need to learn statistics, and I will help them learn how to think statistically. On Day 2 (and again in my last lecture), as a summary of the entire course, I do tell them the solution[2] – this is similar to the structure of the BhagavadGita, in which Krishna summarizes the entire teaching in both Chapter 2 and the final chapter, Chapter 18.
To evaluate whether this intervention was successful at setting the stage for students’ learning, I conducted three surveys throughout the term – one immediately after the Day 1 lecture, one at the midpoint of the semester, and one immediately before my final lecture. With over 500 responses to each of the three timepoints, I am still in the process of fully analyzing the data. However, it appears that the intervention was indeed successful at motivating at least some students. This is evident from the following example responses to survey items:
“[The problems] made me want to get an understanding of stats.”
“It convinced me we need to use statistics for the answers.”
“[The problems] made me want to learn what statistics does.”
“I understood I needed to learn stats.”
Additionally, in the survey data collected prior to the last day of class, this story about my grandfather was by far the story that the students best remembered and saw as important. While there was another story that students said they could imagine themselves in at higher rates, (a story about making a causal inference on whether compression socks can improve your 5k time that I told in the context of my sister and I running together), the fact that students remembered the story about my grandfather’s blood pressure nearly three months after the first lecture and without reinforcement is, I believe, evidence of the story’s efficacy in imparting the necessity and value of learning statistics.
Sources of Pedagogical Inspiration
This is just one small example of how I strive to draw pedagogical inspiration from anywhere I can, even religion. I do not believe this strategy is unique to a single religion, nor any single source. Another example of pedagogical inspiration I have drawn from religion is from Vedic mahavakyas, i.e., great sayings. These great sayings such as aham brahmasmi meaning “I am brahman” serves a role no different than many other great sayings in all religions. Pedagogically, these short sayings are easy to remember but packed with meaning. They serve as a psychological anchor for content knowledge and further inquiry. What then are our fields’ great sayings? From this inspiration I began teaching my students to say: “Who’s not here?” every time they see a graph, in an attempt to foster a critical statistical literacy habit of mind to question information about the sample and sampling strategy, especially regarding its representativeness and appropriateness for generalization.
It might seem odd to seek pedagogical inspiration from religion, but it does not seem so odd to me to keep an open mind in terms of potential sources of pedagogical inspiration. Who knows from where revolutionary new ideas can come?
I believe the best way to support new development and innovation in the teaching of psychology is for each of us to be fully ourselves in all contexts and at all times. Draw on all of your funds of knowledge and apply them generously to your work. Who knows where that may lead? Perhaps, and with any luck, it will lead us forward.
[1] Only 7% of 602 students (out of 1019) from the Spring 2024 semester indicated that if Statistics was not a required course, they would take it because they believe it is important to learn how to think statistically. 22% indicated that they would take Statistics if it was not a required course because they believe it might help them get a job.
[2] Based on the past data, and if my grandfather was in a stable condition consistent with how he usually felt over the previous few months, I predicted that my grandfather’s blood pressure should be around 140 – this is a simple model based on the mean. Accounting for variability, I knew that even if he was in stable condition, his blood pressure wouldn’t be exactly 140 – it could be as low as 120 or as high as 160, the typical amount of variation in his blood pressure. Based on this knowledge, I estimated that the RMSE is about 10, and that a middle 95% prediction interval for his blood pressure should be roughly from 120 to 160. If my grandfather was feeling like he normally does, his blood pressure should have been 140. My grandfather’s actual blood pressure was 110. The prediction error was -30. The z-score for the prediction was -3. The prediction was well outside the middle 95% prediction interval for what I expected my grandfather's blood pressure to be. Either my grandfather was feeling completely normal and this measurement was an extraordinary coincidence, or, the hypothesis that my grandfather is feeling like he normally does is not a good hypothesis.
