Proceedings

  • Ever since 1985, the Department of Statistics at Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore, Pakistan has been engaged in a large number of projects and programmes aimed at the improvement of statistical education in the country. These include (a) statistical competitions for students, (b) statistical exhibitions, and (c) workshops for lecturers and assistant professors working in various intermediate and degree colleges of Pakistan (Habibullah, 1992, 1994, 1995, 2001). The year 1997 witnessed the very first efforts of the Kinnaird College Statistics Department to expand the statistical competition to the worldwide community of students/young adults (Habibullah, 1999). The competition entitled "Data Analysis Talent Award (DATA)" invites students to indulge in projects involving collection and analysis of real-life data, and to write comprehensive reports regarding their projects.

  • Project work has been implemented in the assessment of the final year students in a University Business School. The main objective of the project is to develop students' research skills. Although the project is not necessarily a statistical project, many of these projects involve data analysis. Hence, statistics has become a substantial part of the exercise. However, students have limited understanding in statistics and research methods, thus the main concern is whether they equip themselves in data analysis and what difficulties they encounter while handling data. The paper gives an overview of experience in data analysis for these students. The study is based on a survey conducted amongst the final year students upon completion of their projects. Students' views of data analysis were assessed. Conclusions were drawn in terms of the results, and positive and negative experiences of the students. The strengths and weaknesses of the data analysis are identified. Ways to improve the statistics curriculum and assist students to master the statistical skills in data analysis in future are discussed.

  • There are many ways of teaching students to use statistics and all of these methods have their own relative advantages and disadvantages. The use of projects to enhance learning is one of the most effective methods to use. Students during the project duration need appropriate support for the maximum benefit, from the project, to be obtained. Many countries have successfully implemented statistical project work into their education programmes. The experience gained by students and the teachers, involved with the projects, has been of enormous benefit to the statistical education in these countries. Examples of how statistical projects that have been implemented are to be elucidated. Statistics lends itself to the practical aspects of life and enables students to come into contact with real data, often for the first time in their studies. This data can be usefully employed to engage the students in meaningful debate about, for example, the environment and what statistics should be used to emphasise the salient points being made. Project work brings together many facets of education, statistics being one of them.

  • Recognizing that there is a continuing need to encourage and promote the understanding and application of statistics, the American Statistical Association sponsors a statistical poster competition for grades K-12 that allows students to discover and express their creativity in the analysis of data occurring in their everyday lives. A statistical poster is a visual display containing two or more related graphics that summarize a set of data, that look at the data from different points of view, and that answer some specific questions about the data. If we focus on the mechanical aspects of collecting data and rote learning of how to choose and draw an appropriate graph to summarize it, we still have indeed added another time-consuming activity to the crowded curriculum. In the classroom, graphing activities for poster competitions can be integrated learning activities that can enhance the curriculum rather than burden it.

  • The overwhelming majority of the public will never directly consult a National Statistical Office (NSO) or communicate with it directly. For most citizens, the news media (newspapers, radio and television) provide their only exposure to official statistics. Through them, the NSO achieves its goal of informing the public of economic and social conditions to a degree it could not achieve with its own resources. Consequently, collaboration with the news media as the NSO's gatekeepers to the public is of great importance. As journalists frequently change assignments and as many of them usually have no formal training in statistics, providing a form of "education" in statistical literacy is an ongoing concern for the NSO. Similarly, making the NSO staff aware of the needs and requirements of journalists is an essential step in communicating effectively through the media. The paper will outline the various elements of the media relations program that Statistics Canada has developed over the years.

  • Students at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) come from diverse cultures and often disadvantaged communities where basic amenities, such as running water and electricity, are not a given. The majority (63% in 2001) of our students had their first exposure to computers at university. In order to fast-track these students to meet increasing technological needs, more effective methods of teaching Statistics needed to be explored. Since 1997 innovative teaching approaches such as collaborative learning, teamwork and the use of mind maps were introduced and used to aid students to become acquainted with the prescribed subject matter. These new approaches were compared to traditional classroom teaching in 1997. These interventions were successful in that students not only studied the prescribed material more efficiently, they also developed skills to function effectively in a multicultural team, preparing them for the working environment in South Africa.

  • Teachers of mathematics in Egyptian schools almost depend on traditional lectures and discussions in teaching the statistics units which concentrate often on either mere computational aspects or theoretical concepts and distributions. To change this situation, an experimental approach is suggested to be used in Egyptian schools as a useful base for teaching and learning the subject in these schools. Questions interspersed throughout the experiments intend to promote statistical thinking among students, to help them to discuss the results obtained and to formulate final conclusions. One of the basic features of the approach is to give students the chance to use some of the methods used by real statisticians, then to find out relationships, new meanings and findings for themselves. By using such an approach, students can collect, analyze data and discover things by themselves. A field study conducted for preparatory stage students in Egypt (11 - 14 years old) has revealed the effectiveness of the suggested approach in achieving its goals.

  • This paper reviews the development of higher statistics education in China. Though there has been a clear progress in the theory and direction of the development of higher statistics education in China in recent years, statistics educators' are still debating the issue of the future. They will continue their research work. This paper will then make use of related data to analyze the development of the higher statistics education in China in recent years. It concludes that although there are some problems, higher statistics education in China is developing in both theory and practice. The future of the development of higher statistics education in China will be optimistic.

  • In the present paper statistical education in India at school, college and university levels is discussed in detail. A brief account of statistical education and research activities at some premier institutions is presented. Steps taken by Government of India to popularize statistics are highlighted. Ways and means for further improvement in statistical education at national and international levels are also suggested.

  • This paper presents an overview of statistics education in Hong Kong. While Statistics is not considered a major domain in school mathematics, it is incorporated into all levels of the mathematics curriculum starting with Primary Two. As Hong Kong is currently undergoing an education reform, statistics education is being directed towards a student-centered, activity-based, and hands-on approach with students encouraged to collect, present and interpret data, basing their work on concrete examples from everyday life whenever possible. Student learning is expected to progress from concrete to abstract, and calculators and computers are expected to be used to facilitate student learning. Implications of these approaches are also discussed.

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