Statistical reasoning is often presented as a variety of problems that are explained through a series of "tests" - usually leaving many students bewildered. One of the key elements that is missing from such treatment is building a foundation for understanding what statistical reasoning is and how it works. Simulations, made possible by technology such as graphing calculators, can provide students a conceptual basis for inference. Generating sampling distributions can help them analyze the behavior of a given statistic, explore whether a given observation is unlikely, investigate how changing sample size changes the distribution, explore different kinds of distributions and what makes them different, and give them a sense of how to reason from data. Examples from the world outside of the classroom illustrate how simulation can be a tool in making sensible decisions and give students opportunities to see why statistics is important.
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