Many academics and fields use Twitter as a professional resource. As we all know, statistics education is a field filled with great ideas and wonderful people from all over the world. However, searches for posts relating to statistics education return few results, indicating a lack of presence of our field on Twitter. The information below should help academics and professionals who work at the intersections of statistics, education, and teaching to create and use Twitter accounts to help develop an active, informative social media network.
Definitions
- Microblogging: Activity or practice of making short, frequent posts to a microblog (e.g., Twitter).
- Hashtag: A word or phrase preceded by a hash or pound sign (#) and used to identify messages about a specific topic.
- List: A curated group of Twitter accounts. You can create your own lists or subscribe to lists created by others. Viewing a list timeline will show you a stream of Tweets from only the accounts on that list.
- Follow: Following another user means that all their tweets will appear in your feed.
Uses of Twitter for Academics
- Build/maintain professional networks: during conferences; information sharing; literature recommendations; learn about academic/professional opportunities; career advice; microblogging
- Advertise: research; events; publications; other updates
- Increase visibility: individual; field
Academic Twitter Resources
- Using Twitter in Academia
- Using Twitter in University Research, Teaching, and Impact Activities: A Guide for Academics and Researchers
- 10 Commandments of Twitter for Academics
- Twitter Glossary
Twitter Accounts to Follow
- @AmstatNews American Statistical Association
- @RoyalStatSoc Royal Statistical Society
- @CAUSEweb Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education
- @NCTM National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
- @IntCSE International Centre for Statistical Education
- @ThisisStats ASA project to raise awareness of careers in statistics
- @signmagazine Statistics magazine and website by the Royal Statistics Society and ASA
- @DrSteveFoti Me
Common Abbreviations
Since a tweet is limited to 140 characters, abbreviations are used to replace commonly used phrases. This is a list of frequently used abbreviations, but you will likely encounter many more. Use your favorite search engine if you need help decoding one.
- RT: retweet
- MT: modified tweet
- FWIW: for what it’s worth
- BTW: by the way
- IMO: in my opinion
Relevant Hashtags
- #statistics
- #statistician
- #StatEd
- #StatisticsEducation
- #statliteracy
- #biostatistics
- #BiostatEd
- #data
- #dataliteracy
- #JSM2018
- #DataScience
- #rstats
- #NoticeWonder
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steven Foti is a clinical assistant professor in the department of biostatistics and the director of the online MS program at the University of Florida. He earned his PhD in statistics education and his MS in statistics from the University of Florida, while earning his BS in applied mathematics and statistics and physics from Clarkson University. He teaches biostatistics courses to both undergraduate and graduate students in public health and medicine. Follow Foti on Twitter by searching @DrSteveFoti.
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