Developing students’ reasoning about samples and sampling variability as a path to expert statistical thinking


Authors: 
Garfield, J., Le, L., Zieffler, A., & Ben-Zvi, D.
Category: 
Volume: 
88(3)
Pages: 
327-342
Year: 
2015
Publisher: 
Educational Studies in Mathematics
Abstract: 

This paper describes the importance of developing students’ reasoning about samples and sampling variability as a foundation for statistical thinking. Research on expert–novice thinking as well as statistical thinking is reviewed and compared. A case is made thatstatisticalthinkingisatypeofexpertthinking,andassuch,researchcomparingnoviceand expert thinking can inform the research on developing statistical thinking in students. It is also posited that developing students’ informal inferential reasoning, akin to novice thinking, can help build the foundations of experts’ statistical thinking.

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

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