Perspectives and realities of teaching statistics at a superior school of business administration

This paper aims to describe the reality of the teaching of statistics in a superior school of business administration in Portugal. It is supported in a twenty years of experience teaching several disciplines belonging to the scientific area of Mathematics such as: Statistics and Probability, Data Analysis, Calculus, Algebra and Numerical Analysis. This experience is not limited to school of business administration but also in engineering and health courses and in all these schools there has been a substantial increase of failure in these disciplines.I intend to present the main difficulties that teachers encounter. These difficulties are due to a diversity of problems. A leading cause is undoubtedly the huge heterogeneity of the level of knowledge that students have. The large number of students in each class it is also a massive problem. I must point out that, in my opinion, the introduction of the Bologna process has aggravated this situation. The assumption of reduced classroom hours and an increase in...