Journal Article

  • This article describes the virtual manufacturing environment Watfactory (freely available at http://services03.student.math.uwaterloo.ca:8080/~stat435/login.htm) and discusses its use in teaching process improvement. Watfactory provides a rich and realistic simulation of a manufacturing process and is accessed through a website requiring no software other than a Web browser. With Watfactory, students select, plan, and analyze the data from a sequence of empirical investigations of many different types, with the ultimate goal of reducing variation in the process output. We have found that using Watfactory addresses many shortcomings in traditional teaching methods for both undergraduate and industrial short courses.

  • This study investigated elementary school teachers' comprehension of data displays. Assessment, interview, and observation data were analyzed to determine their level of comprehension. Results revealed that the teachers were proficient at "reading the data" and computation types of "reading between the data" questions, but were unsuccessful with questions that assessed higher levels of graphical comprehension. Many of the difficulties exhibited by the teachers appear to be attributable to a lack of exposure to the content. Implications for teacher preparation, professional development, and curricula development are discussed.

  • There is growing recognition of the importance of developing young students' informal inferential reasoning (IIR). This focus on informal inference in school statistics has implications for teacher education. This study reports on 26 preservice teachers utilizing Lesson Study to support a focus on the teaching of IIR in primary classrooms. Participants demonstrated proficiency reasoning about the elements fundamental to informal inferential reasoning but had difficulties developing pedagogical contexts to advance primary students' informal inferential reasoning. Specifically, issues emerged relating to data type, an excessive focus on procedures, locating opportunities for IIR, and a lack of justification and evidence-based reading. Focusing on the lesson as the unit of analysis combined with classroom-based inquiry supported the development of statistical and pedagogical knowledge.

  • We examined how middle school students reason about results from a computer-simulated die-tossing experiment, including various representations of data, to support or refute an assumption that the outcomes on a die are equiprobable. We used students' actions with the software and their social interactions to infer their expectations and whether or not they believed their empirical data could be used to refute an assumption of equiprobable outcomes. Comparisons across students illuminate intricacies in their reasoning as they collect and analyze data from the die tosses. Overall, our research contributes to understanding how students can engage in informal hypothesis testing and use data from simulations to make inferences about a probability distribution.

  • This article shows that when applying resampling methods to the problem of comparing two proportions, students can discover that whether you resample with or without replacement can make a big difference.

  • This article advocates the use of mnemonics as an aid to learning statistics. Some examples are supplied and others sought.

  • Clinically clear, statistically sound and easy-to-understand interpretation of a screening result for a serious disease to a patient is very important.

  • W.A. Wallis studied vacancies in the US Supreme Court over a 96-year period (1837-1932) and found that the distribution of the number of vacancies per year could be characterized by a Poisson model. This note updates this classic study.

  • Recent evidence indicates that decision makers are more sensitive to potential losses than gains. Loss aversion psychology has led behavioural economists to look beyond expected utility by developing prospect theory. We demonstrate this theory using the Deal or No Deal game show.

  • Asterisks should not be used to indicate if the result of a hypothesis test is significant.

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