Investigating statistical unusualness in the context of a resampling activity: Students exploring connections between sampling distributions and statistical inference.


Book: 
Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference On Teaching Statistics (ICOTS-7), Salvador, Brazil.
Authors: 
Saldanha, L. A., & Thompson, P. A.
Editors: 
Rossman, A., & Chance, B.
Category: 
Year: 
2006
Publisher: 
Voorburg, The Netherlands: International Statistical Institute.
URL: 
http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/publications/17/6A3_SALD.pdf
Abstract: 

Reasoning proportionally about collections of a sample statistic's values is central to developing a coherent understanding of statistical inference. This paper discusses key developments that unfolded in a classroom teaching experiment designed to support students constructing such understanding. Instruction engaged students in activities that focused their attention on the variability among outcomes of randomly drawn samples. There occurred a critical shift in students' attention and discourse away from individual sample outcomes and toward the distribution of a collection of sample outcomes. This shift supported further developments concerning how to compare entire distributions of sample outcomes as a basis for conceptualizing a notion of statistical unusualness. We characterize aspects of these developments in relation to students' classroom engagement.

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