Understanding Statistical Misconceptions


Book: 
Proceedings of the sixth international conference on teaching statistics, Developing a statistically literate society
Authors: 
Callaert, H.
Editors: 
Phillips, B.
Category: 
Pages: 
Online
Year: 
2002
Publisher: 
International Statistical Institute
URL: 
http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/publications/1/10_07_ca.pdf
Abstract: 

This paper reports on a preliminary study conducted for gaining better insight in the complexity of students' misconceptions of representativeness. Data from 156 students (112 high school graduates and 44 students with a university degree) are presented. The overall outcome indicates a lack of ability to refer problems about specific experiments to their correct context. Some results seem to contradict part of the representativeness heuristic described by Kahneman and Tversky (1972). They might also indicate that multiple-choice tests, even with two-part questions, are not able to fully capture the deep complexity of students' misunderstandings.

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