Contribution of learning statistics at secondary school to students' results at university.


Book: 
Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference On Teaching Statistics (ICOTS-7), Salvador, Brazil.
Authors: 
Fonseca, J. R. S., & Martinho, C. A. L.
Editors: 
Rossman, A., & Chance, B.
Category: 
Year: 
2006
Publisher: 
Voorburg, The Netherlands: International Statistical Institute.
URL: 
http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/publications/17/C438.pdf
Abstract: 

This study concentrates on the analysis of responses to a questionnaire given to a sample of University Students in Portugal that concerns the teaching/learning of Statistics and Data Analysis. We first focus on the effectiveness of teaching Quantitative Methods at secondary level as regards increasing performance in the Introductory Statistical Course (ISC) at University level. The second question is related to the students' feelings towards Mathematics and whether these feelings imply a difference in students' performance on statistics. Even when results cannot be generalised, since the study is limited to our context, the data analysed suggest the need to rethink the goals of teaching statistics at secondary school level, at least in our context.

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