Next semester I will teach an elementary statistic course for the first time (which I am actually quite excited about). A brief description can be found here. I am told to expect very little math background from the students. The class size is about 40-50, meeting twice a week , each class lasts about one and half hour. I do have a graduate student helping with grading and recitation.
My first question is about textbook. Please let me know of suitable texts which are:
1) Fun to teach and learn from, especially for students with less background. I would like a book with lot of interestingand , engaging, probably more exotic examples ( so less diseases and more, say, gambling!)gambling! ).
2) Relatively cheap (preferably less than 100 USD). In this economy we don't want to make students pay too much. Most texts I came across seem quite expensive. (Unless if the text is really a treasure, then one can worry less about price.)
The second question is about the best way to teach such a course. My instinct is that a heavy lecture style would not work very well, especially since the class is one and half hour long. Do you know ways (preferably with references, especially visual references) to teach this materials without too much lecturing?
Thanks in advance.
(I did not make this community wiki since I want to reward the best answer, and also I am not sure there will be many equally good answers given how much I wanted. Let me know if you disagree, I am open to change on this issue.)
EDIT: The student body will be quite varied. I am told there will be psychology majors and some engineering students, but the majority would prefer examples to proofs.
