Marty Triola:
Teaching stats with real data

Triola wrote his first book, Mathematics and the Modern World, in 1973 at the encouragement of Dutchess Community College department head Al Washington. "He thought I had some talent," said Triola, who still teaches at Dutchess, near Poughkeeopsie, New York. "I really enjoy the challenge of structuring sentences and having ideas flow together."

He has now written eight books, one of which won a 1998 Texty excellence award from Text and Academic Authors. "When I heard that the seventh edition of Elementary Statistics, won a Texty, I was delighted," Triola said. "There really isn't much in the way of recognition when you author a textbook apart from royalty checks, so when colleagues say you're doing something in a way that's effective and successful, that's rewarding and delightful."

After seven editions, Elementary Statistics is the best-selling textbook in its field. What's made the book so successful? Several things, Triola said: "It's full of real data. I thought that would be important to students." More than 50 percent of the exercises come from real data, he said, including a study funded by the Census Bureau in which University of Arizona researchers predicted household size by collecting recyclables from a sampling of households.

The text comes with a free software supplement, Statdisk, a statistical software package developed by Triola and coauthor William Flynn and Password, Inc. "In teaching the elementary statistics course, I really like to get students involved in computers," he said. "It's an ideal course to develop those skills. Statdisk gave me the opportunity to get them involved in computers." First developed in 1988, it was revised significantly in 1998.Triola said: "It was at first a menu-driven program. Now it's a full-blown Windows program." Using Statdisk, Triola said, students learn not only about the program itself, but how to operate in a general Windows environment: "These skills are important in their careers."

Triola said he tried to make Elementary Statistics more interesting for students by adding marginal mini-essays that describe mathematical statistics. For instructors, he tried to make their lives easier by including an annotated instructor's edition, test banks, a Powerpoint presentation and sample syllabi. "These things make the course easy for both students and instructors," he said.

When heavily involved in a project, Triola said, it consumes the vast majority of his free time. He said he likes to have quiet music playing in the background while he writes. Triola gives this advice for writers: "Successful writing takes a serious commitment and a fairly rigorous discipline. You can't go into it with the attitude that you're going to simply write something with the objective of getting it finished and printed. It's important to have high standards and goals, and to be committed to writing the best possible book of its type."

Triola is also a writing team member with NASA-AMATYC Project Coalition, funded by the National Science Foundation and supported by NASA and the American Mathematics Association of Two-Year Colleges. As a team member, he has spent time at the Kennedy Space Center exploring areas off-limits to tourists. For the past two summers Triola has gone to Kennedy to develop teaching materials based on NASA activities. Triola, who is a flight buff, said it was a real treat to spend time at Kennedy: "I kicked the tires on the Endeavor even though we were told not to touch anything. I also met two astronauts. I hope in my lifetime I'll be able to take a space trip." It's the only thing he hasn't flown, it seems. Triola has flown airplanes, helicopters, sail planes, hang gliders and hot air balloons.

Triola enjoys traveling. He and his wife Ginny and sons Marc and Scott have traveled to 49 states, gone on a Kenyan photo safari, a rafting trip down the Colorado River Grand Canyon, hiked in Yellowstone National Park and traveled to Egypt, Greece, Alaska, Scandanavia and Eastern Europe. "I like seeing different cultures and fantastic natural sites," he said.

— reported by Kim Pawlak, 1998