Literature Index

To overcome of the difficulties that external examinations present for the teaching of statistics, a number of countries have introduced course work into their assessment. This paper looks at how this is done in New Zealand.

This paper presents some issues arising in the use of unscripted consulting projects for final year undergraduate students. The issues relate to the context and difficulty of the projects, the supervisor's role, the technical and interpersonal skills required to be developed by the student, the randomness of consulting projects, with their concomitant frustrations and messiness; and the role of such projects in the transition to work as a statistician. It is argued that such a course provides valuable experience that cannot be achieved by simulated, scripted or more closely managed programs.

In the recent years, statistics educators have been actively rethinking how students learn statistics and how to teach introductory statistics. Furthermore, the current technology continues to open new opportunities for developing innovative teaching strategies. This article presents a paradigm, the PACE approach, for teaching the introductory statistics. PACE stands for projects, activities, cooperative learning using computer and exercises. The approach begins with in-class hands-on activities and cooperative team work. The class lectures are organized to provide the basic concepts and guide students through the activities using team work and computer to help students understand the concepts and problem-solving strategies. Exercises are designed to reinforce the basic concepts and to practice solving real world problems. Projects are self-selected by students under some guidance provided by the instructor. Report writing and oral presentation are emphasized. It is believed that self-selected projects reflect student's interest, and hence better motivate them to be active learners. The paradigm of integrating these components together in a structured system motivates students to be actively involve with their learning.

South African society emerges from a political legacy that strove to create a dysfunctional society by implementing an official policy of racial discrimination, the effects of which can be observed in education, wealth distribution, employment, and settlement patterns amongst others. Therefore the challenge of statistical literacy is not only improving levels of competency in economics, science and technology, but also to address basic literacy and numeracy. An impressive budget allocation to education in recent times has helped primary education, but less for senior school where drop-out rates are high. An even much bigger challenge is adult illiteracy. In his address to the nation, the President emphasised the need for economic literacy in South Africa. The basic ingredient for this is statistical literacy; thus enhancing knowledge of mathematics and statistics can begin to address deficiencies in economic literacy. While there are programs for training statisticians, this paper confines itself largely to the broad based statistics awareness raising programmes.