Abstract:

The Statistics course of the Aerospace Engineering Degree in the Universitat Politècnica de València began during the academic year 2021-2022 a new teaching experience. The objective was to motivate students and develop their ability to search for quality information about a controversial and current issue with a critical spirit, and its subsequent analysis. Enhancing skills such as argumentation, oratory, the search for information and collaborative work were additional objectives.

Specifically, the topic raised was "STATISTICS vs ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE", introducing students to the new tools of Big Data and comparing the classic techniques of Statistics with the new techniques. Are statistical techniques no longer used for Data Analysis? Are only Artificial Intelligence techniques used that make decisions automatically without using statistical techniques that have become obsolete?

The students worked in teams, collected information on a specific topic, and prepared a small presentation on a specific technique, presenting the conclusions they reached to the rest of the classmates. Each topic was developed by two groups: the first defended Classical Statistics and the second the innovative techniques of AI. Their classmates asked questions to both groups, whilst the professor was moderating the debate.

In this article, we show how we develop this debate, and the main conclusions reached after performing this activity.

Keywords:

Debate, statistics, learning, data.