Literature Index

According to the representativeness heuristic, the probability that an element is an exemplar of a given class is judged to be high to the extent that the element is representative of the class with respect to its salient features. In three experiments involving situations previously called upon in support of representativeness theory, questionnaire responses from 265 university students demonstrated systematic biases that deviated sharply from the obvious predictions of the theory. One such bias, the students' misinterpretation of proportion information as absolute-number information, is comparable to Piaget's concrete operations. The implications for representativeness theory are discussed in terms of the theory's relationship to concrete thinking, the importance of task characteristics, and the difficulty of a priori specification of the salient features with respect to which representativeness is assessed.

Over the past 25 years or so there has been a growing interest and amount of research work into the teaching of probability and statistics. This interest and research has been reflected in the five International Conferences on Teaching Statistics, the establishment of journals such as Teaching Statistics and the Journal for Statistics Education as well as an increasing number of articles in other journals and papers at other conferences. Initially the emphasis was on school pupils but, increasingly, there has been an emphasis on teaching undergraduates.<br>In their bibliography, Sahai, et al (1996) list 2367 references up until the year 1994. With so much published work it is difficult for newcomers to the field to know where to start. The following list of basic references attempts to pull together the various strands of research about undergraduate teaching so that new lecturers will be able to get a quick overview of current thinking and where it has come from. The many older references are to give an historical context and reflect the influences on today's practice.<br>As in all such summary bibliographies there is a lot of subjectivity in the choice of what to include. It was difficult to decide whether or not to include textbooks. In the end I decided to include a few that had been particularly influential on the way statistics is taught at undergraduate level. I have not included any of the very interesting references that are specific to the school level because this would have made what was intended to be a short list even longer than it has become. The list has been circulated amongst a lot of people working in the field of statistical education and I have benefited from their advice. In the final analysis, though, the final decision was mine and any errors and omissions are mine. I would welcome correspondence about any important contributions that are missing and any references that I have included that you think should not be.

This report discusses statistical education and some possible changes in courses.

Graphical, computational, interactive, and simulation capabilities of computers can be successfully employed in the teaching of elementary probability, either as classroom demonstrations or as exploratory exercises in a computer laboratory. In this first paper of a contemplated series, two programs for EGA-equipped IBM-PC compatible machines are included with indications of their pedagogical uses. Concepts illustrated include the law of the large numbers, the frequentist definition of a probability, the Poisson distribution and process, and intuitive approaches to independence and randomness. (Commands for rough equivalents to the programs using Minitab are shown in the Appendix.)