Various terms are used to describe mathematical concepts, in general, and statistical concepts, in particular. Regarding statistical concepts in the Hebrew language, some of these terms have the same meaning both in their everyday use and in mathematics, such as Mode; some of them have a different meaning, such as Expected value and Life expectancy; and some have the opposite meaning, such as Significance level. Spoken language plays an important role in shaping how the informal statistical definitions taught in schools are remembered. In the present study we examine the impact of the everyday use of terms on the students' informal definitions of various statistical concepts. Though all the study participants were familiar with the concepts they were asked to define, a high percentage of them failed to provide correct definitions of the given statistical concepts. Analysis of the incorrect definitions revealed that the everyday use of the terms used to label the concepts, influenced the informal definitions provided by the students.
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education