Confidence intervals are difficult to teach, in part because most students appear to believe they understand how to interpret them intuitively. They rarely do. To help them abandon their misconception and achieve understanding, we have developed a simulation tool that encourages experimentation with multiple confidence intervals derived from the same population.
In this article I present an activity introducing statistical concepts to engineering students to help them develop inductive reasoning and problem-solving skills.
This article introduces the recently adopted Guidelines for the Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) and provides two examples of introductory statistics courses that have been redesigned to better align with these guidelines.
This article describes use of a novel statistical activity with primary school children.
This article reviews several attempts to define degrees of freedom, and offers some simple explanations of how they are derived and why they are used in various contexts.
This article points out an unexpected but common misconception by students dealing with the exponential distribution.
This article considers some issues in designing a course focusing on statistical concepts rather than memorizing formulae.
An elusive probability paradox is analysed. The fallacy is traced back to improper use of a symbol that denotes at the same time a random variable and two different values that it may assume.
This article illustrates the concept of statistical independence using the example of slot machines that may be played on multiple lines.
Probability classrooms often fail to develop sustainable conceptions of probability as strategic<br>tools that can be activated for decisions in everyday random situations. The article starts from the assumption<br>that one important reason might be the often empirically reconstructed divergence between individual<br>conceptions of probabilistic phenomena and the normative conceptions taught in probability classrooms,<br>especially concerning pattern in random. Since the process of dealing with these phenomena cannot<br>sufficiently be explained by existing frameworks alone, an alternative - horizontal - view on conceptual<br>change is proposed. Its use for research and development within the so-called Educational Reconstruction<br>Program is presented. The empirical part of the paper is based on a qualitative study with 10 game interviews.<br>Central results concern the oszillation between conceptions and cognitive layers and the situatedness of their<br>activation. In particular, diverging perspectives seem to root in contrasting foci of attention, namely the<br>mathematically suitable long-term perspective being in concurrence to the more natural short-term attention<br>to single outcomes. The Educational Reconstruction Program offers an interesting possibility to specify roots<br>of obstacles and to develop guidelines for designing learning environments which respect the horizontal view.