The Importance of Discussing Assumptions when Teaching Bootstrapping

Bootstrapping and other resampling methods are progressively appearing in the textbooks and curricula of courses that introduce undergraduate students to statistical methods. Though bootstrapping may have more relaxed assumptions than its traditional counterparts, it is in no way assumption-free. Students and instructors of these courses need to be well-informed about the assumptions of bootstrapping. This article details some of the assumptions and conditions that instructors should be aware of when teaching the simple bootstrap for uncertainty quantification and hypothesis testing. We emphasize the importance of these assumptions and conditions using simulations which investigate the performance of these methods when they are or are not reasonably met. We also discuss software options for introducing undergraduate students to these bootstrap methods, including a newly developed $\texttt{R}$ package. Supplementary materials for the article are available online.