The necessity of Equity in Teaching Statistics

There is evidence that students have prior conceptions about fairness and these conceptions appear to have the potential to interfere with the learning of statistics topics such as simulation with physical manipulatives, surveys, randomized experiments, and expected value, as well as the understanding of words such as bias or discrimination. Because of this, it is strongly recommended that statistics instructors explicitly acknowledge and take into account the role that student views of fairness play. Related to equity and fairness beliefs is the possible interaction of cultural background with the learning of specific topics, and empirical evidence (p < .01) suggests that this can happen with certain populations when using the common courtroom metaphor to illustrate hypothesis testing