00-foreword.Rmd

These are exciting times in statistics and data science education. (I am predicting this statement will continue to be true regardless of whether you are reading this foreword in 2020 or 2050.) But (isn't there always a but?), as a statistics educator it can also feel a bit overwhelming to stay on top of all the new statistical, technological, and pedagogical innovations. I find myself constantly asking, "Am I teaching my students the correct content, with the relevant software, and in the most effective way?" Before I make all of us feel lost at sea, let me point out how great a life raft I have found ModernDive to be. In a sea of intro stats textbooks, ModernDive floats to the top of my list and let me tell you why. (Note my use of "ModernDive" here to refer to the book in its shortened title version. This also matches up nicely with the [neat hex sticker](https://moderndive.com/images/logos/hex_white_text.png) Dr. Ismay and Dr. Kim had created too.) 

```{r, fig.align='center', echo=FALSE, out.width="70%"}
knitr::include_graphics("images/ModernDive_heart.png")
```

My favorite aspect of ModernDive, if I must pick a favorite, is that students gain experience with the whole data analysis pipeline (see Figure \@ref(fig:moderndive-figure)). In particular, ModernDive is one of the few intro stats textbooks that teaches students how to wrangle data. And, while data cleaning may not be as groovy as model building, it's often a prerequisite step! The world is full of messy data and ModernDive equips students to transform their data via the `dplyr` package.  

Speaking of `dplyr`, students of ModernDive are exposed to the `tidyverse` suite of R packages. Designed with a common structure, `tidyverse` functions are written to be easy to learn and to use.  And, since most intro stats students are programming newbies, ModernDive carefully walks the students through each new function it presents and provides frequent reinforcement through the many *Learning Checks* dispersed throughout the chapters.  

Overall, ModernDive makes wise choices about the placement of topics. Starting with data visualization, ModernDive gets students building `ggplot2` graphs early on and then continues to reinforce important concepts graphically throughout the book. After moving through data wrangling and data importing, modeling plays a prominent role with two chapters devoted to building regression models and a later chapter on inference for regression. Lastly, statistical inference is presented through a computational lens with calculations done via the `infer` package.   

I first met Dr. Ismay and Dr. Kim while attending their [ModernDive workshop at the 2017 US Conference on Teaching Statistics](https://www.causeweb.org/cause/uscots/uscots17/workshop/3). They pushed us as participants to put data first and to use computers, instead of math, as the engine for statistical inference. That experience helped me modernize my own intro stats course and introduced me to two really forward-thinking statistics and data science educators. It has been exciting to see ModernDive develop and grow into such a wonderful, timely textbook. I hope you have decided to dive on in!

*Kelly S. McConville, Reed College*