Journal Article

  • This study examined the possibility of a curvilinear relationship between statistics anxiety and performance in a statistics course. Eighty-three undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory course completed measures of statistics anxiety and need for achievement at seven points during the semester in conjunction with six tests. Statistics anxiety scores were reliable internally and across time. Statistics anxiety decreased during the term yet paradoxically became more strongly related to performance. Curvilinear models were better predictors of test performance than linear, suggesting a mid-range optimal level of statistics anxiety. However, students' need for achievement proved not to mediate the relationship between anxiety and performance. The authors suggest ways these findings may influence future research in statistics anxiety and classroom management of anxiety.

  • This paper starts from the premise that teachers' discourse communities influence how ideas for reform are implemented. In order to understand some of the discourse surrounding the reforms proposed by GAISE, an online focus group activity was conducted. The focus group consisted of pre-service and practicing teachers responsible for teaching statistics at various grade levels. Focus group discourse was used to formulate a set of working hypotheses about actions that need to be taken to facilitate the implementation of GAISE. Working hypotheses emphasized that statistics educators need to play roles in developing teachers' content knowledge, helping teachers understand the differences between mathematics and statistics, deepening teachers' pedagogical knowledge, building teachers' curricular knowledge, and influencing the writing of state-level standards.

  • Research investigating how students begin to consider and reason about variation will help educators identify stages of this development. This can provide direction for learning activities to help students develop a strong consideration of variation that can be applied in a variety of contexts. In the present study, tertiary student responses to a class test and an assignment question are analysed, resulting in a description of levels of consideration of variation relevant to these tasks. This and other hierarchies previously developed are used to formulate a Consideration of Variation Hierarchy applicable to a variety of tasks. Implications for research and teaching are discussed.

  • In this article, we present a somewhat surprising result connected with random permutations.

  • This article describes how a spreadsheet-based tool can be used to provide personalized statistics homework exercises for each student in a class.

  • This article describes a classroom demonstration that may be used to encourage students' development and understanding of the idea of hypothesis testing.

  • This article describes how roulette can be used to teach basic concepts of probability. Various bets are used to illustrate the computation of expected value. A betting system shows variations in patterns that often appear in random events.

  • Several tasks used in research studies are presented with assessment rubrics and examples of the development of student understanding. The tasks focus on students' appreciation of variation in several contexts and illustrate the need to discuss variation in the classroom and to ask students specifically about it during assessment.

  • A picture of a 95% confidence interval (CI) implicitly contains pictures of CIs of all other levels of confidence, and information about the p-value for testing a null hypothesis. This article discusses pictures, taken from interactive software, that suggest several ways to think about the level of confidence of a CI, p-values, and what conclusions can be drawn from inspecting a CI.

  • Students often find the fact that a sample statistic is a random variable very hard to grasp. Even more mysterious is why a sample mean should become ever more Normal as the sample size increases. This simulation tool is meant to illustrate the process, thereby giving students some intuitive grasp of the relationship between a parent population and the distribution of a sample mean.

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