Report

  • This report covers the progress of the ELASTIC project.

  • This report discusses the goals and accomplishments of PROJECT STARC over Year 1.

  • We are attempting to identify conceptual challenges that students encounter as they design, collect and analyze data about a real situation. We propose the term "data modeling" to describe this process and present a new computerized tool for working with data called the Tabletop. While the Tabletop is a tool for analyzing data, we conjecture that it can help students become better designers of data. Examples from clinical research in progress help to show how closely intertwined are the phases of data modeling, and thus begin to resolve the apparent paradox of how a technological tool for one phase can benefit others.

  • This packet is a collection of several separate papers from ICOTS IIII. It includes the following papers:

  • A frame of an interplay between intuitions of individuals and abstract theories is developed. Within this frame difficulties in learning/understanding a theory may be described by a breakdown in communication between the intuitive level of individuals and the "official" language of theory (used in class). It is, however, the scope of pertaining empirical research on probability concepts to investigate such intuitive imaginations. We will show that the interpretation of results is a precarious task and cannot successfully be done without regarding this interplay between intuitions and mathematics frame. Among the major problems are: Understanding of concepts and problem solving strategies are on different levels. It is hard to get information about the concept level in probands. The spectrum of intuitions covered be the investigations so far is very narrow, a huge percentage of diagnosing items referring to the symmetry view, few being related to the frequency aspect, hardly any to subjectivist ideas. The narrowness of the view on probability leads you inextricably into puzzles and troubles and may cause a breakdown in communication between interviewer and interviewed. The results of the discussion are directly transferred to the teaching situation. Some clues for improving teaching in class may be drawn from it.

  • This article discusses the author's initial experience of teaching statistics in an American university, and the sort of way he thinks the subject should be taught. (Specifically, we look at the assumption of normality, and indicate how conventional treatment in the area of hypothesis testing might be modified.) My comments primarily apply to elementary service courses, and particularly to those provided for business students.

  • In their article Ayton, Hunt and Wright (1989) address a number of issues that impinge on the concept of randomness. They appear to question not only the methodological soundness and general implications of research on "misconceptions" in statistics, but also the soundness of aspects of statistical inference. We concentrate here on a few key issues about which we are in disagreement (we think) with the authors.

  • In this paper, we will examine the present state of probability and statistics teaching in Japanese senior high school mathematics. We should take note that we are only concerned with probability and statistics teaching within school mathematics and not the whole area, e.g., statistics in other subjects and in other activities of school life.

  • This study aims to analyze the place of statistics in secondary school mathematics education and the problem areas related to statistics in training teachers of secondary school mathematics in Turkey.

  • This investigation is a pilot study into the level of statistical graphic literacy to be found amongst a group of lower sixth form female students.

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