Literature Index

For the past twenty years, we have been using an original technique to teach statistics and survey sampling methods to postgraduates studying economics and statistics. The students must put their knowledge into practice by carrying out a survey sample for a client who they will have found by themselves. This may include a marketing study for a shop, a brand or a public service, or measuring the audience ratings of a radio station or local television station. More than 100 different surveys have already been carried out by students on this program over the last 20 years. Furthermore, every six years, during the regional parliamentary elections, the entire group (25 students) carries out an estimate of the results for the public local television station, on the basis of the first ballot papers counted in a sample of 300 polling stations; our results are broadcast live on television 30 minutes after the close of polling.

Statistical methodology textbook.

In this article, Frederick Mosteller, Richard Light, and Jason Sachs explore the nature of the empirical evidence that can inform school leaders' key decisions about how to organize students within schools: Should students be placed in heterogeneous classes or tracked classes? What is the impact of cclass size on students learning? How does it vary? Since tracking (or skill grouping, as the authors prefer to call it) is widely used in U.S. Schools, the authors expected to find a wealth of evidence to support the efficacy of the practice. Surprisingly, they found only a handful of well-designed studies exploring the academic benefits of tracking, and of these, the results were equivocal. With regard to class size, the authors describe the Tennessee class size study, using it to illustrate that large, long-term, randomized controlled field trials can be carried out successfully in education. The Tennessee study demonstrates convincingly that student achievement is better supported in smaller classes in grades K-3, and that this enhanced achievement continues when the srudents move to regular-size classes in the fourth grade and beyond. The authors suggest in conclusion that education would benefit from a commitment to sustained inquiry through well-designed, randomized controlled field trials of education innovations. Such sustained inquiry could provide a source of solid evidence of which educators could base their decisions about how to organize and support student learning in classes and schools.

The problem which inspired the present research referred to the relationships between schemata and intuitions. Schemata are defined following the Piagetian line of thought, as programs of processing information and controlling adaptive reactions. Intuitions are defined as self-evident, global, immediate cognitions.<br>Our main hypothesis was that intuitions are generally based on certain structural schemata. In the present research this hypothesis was checked with regard to intuitive solutions of combinatorial problems.