Teaching statistics is harder than most people give it credit for being. One problem in teaching statistics is that many people teach statistics after not studying much statistics, as discussed in the article "Advice to Mathematics Teachers on Evaluating Introductory Statistics Textbooks,"

http://statland.org/MyPapers/MAAFIXED.PDF

which leads to generations of teachers and learners who think they know more about statistics than they actually do.

Another thing that is hard to teach about statistics is valid inferences from what kind of data were gathered in the first place, as discussed in the article "The Introductory Statistics Course: A Ptolemaic Curriculum?"

http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz

It is easy to find examples of statistics courses and particular statistics lessons that are lousy. The harder task, as discussed by the authors I cite above, is building better statistics curricula for deeper understanding of the subject.

From the article kindly submitted here:

"I don’t like the Khan Academy videos about statistics. But I can see why some people do. Some are okay, though some are very bad. I’m rather sorry they exist though, as they perpetuate the idea of statistics as mathematics."

That's a very legitimate and cogent complaint, one worth taking to heart at Khan Academy.

I'd like to hear from HN readers who have taken up the article author's challenge of comparing videos about such topics as confidence intervals, which is a tricky concept I have to write about a lot for my work.