Determining the educational potential of computer based strategies for developing and understanding of sampling distributions

An analysis of the steps involved in forming the idea of an empirical sampling distribution and the nature of the methods and/or images used in most computer based strategies to teach this idea suggest that this way of using the computer adds little insight to the usual text based explanations that they are designed to complement. This analysis suggests reasons why a more recent approach which uses the computer to model and dynamically display the processes that underlie the idea is more likely to be successful. (orig.)