Literature Index

Displaying 2631 - 2640 of 3326
  • Author(s):
    Simonoff, J. S.
    Year:
    1997
    Abstract:
    Dawson (1995) described a dataset giving population at risk and fatalities for an unusual mortality episode (the sinking of the ocean liner Titanic), and discussed experiences in using the dataset in an introductory statistics course. In this paper the same dataset is analyzed from the point of view of the second statistics course. A combination of exploratory analysis using tables of observed survival percentages, model building using logistic regression, and careful thought allows the statistician (and student) to get to the essence of the random process described by the data. The well-known nature of the episode gives the students a chance at determining its character, and the data are complex enough to require sophisticated modeling methods to get at the truth.
  • Author(s):
    Dawson, R. J. M.
    Year:
    1995
    Abstract:
    A certain dataset, giving population at risk and fatalities for "an unusual episode," has been used for some time in classrooms as an elementary exercise in statistical thinking, the challenge being to deduce the context of the data. Unfortunately, the "solution" has frequently been circulated orally, with few details. Moreover, discrepancies have been found between the dataset and the "solution," which would render the exercise somewhat artificial. This paper investigates the discrepancies and includes a fully-explained version of the dataset for classroom use.
  • Author(s):
    Freudenthal, H.
    Year:
    1972
    Abstract:
    It is not unusual today - even among people who consider probability as a concern of pure mathematics - to start a probability course with an attempt to uncover the experimental roots of the probability concept. In fact, it is not a new feature. The story about tossing a coin with the happy result of a fair distribution of heads and tails in the long run has been the custom for quite a long time. What is new about it, is that the story is dramatized and acted out - I mean, by the author or the textbook. Maybe even the teachers or the students are expected to try out this experiment - following the highly encouraging examples given by the textbook authors. It is a pity that by showing one experiment without asking themselves whether it is typical, textbook authors lead the teachers up the wrong path and help to create wrong attitudes towards probabilistic problems.
  • Author(s):
    Green, K. E.
    Year:
    1994
    Abstract:
    Suggestions from the literature for dealing with students' statistics anxiety are listed in this paper. The role of motion in learning is reviewed and results of a small correlational study are used to illustrate the association between the affective component of attidude as a measure of anxiety and statistics performance for classes of education students. Strategies the author has found helpful are presented.
  • Author(s):
    Scheaffer, R. L.
    Editors:
    Vere-Jones, D., Carlyle, S., & Dawkins, B. P.
    Year:
    1991
    Abstract:
    The NSF-funded Quantitative Literacy Project (QLP), a joint project of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), served as the basis from which the strand in statistics was developed for the NCTM Standards. The QLP provides curriculum materials in certain areas of data exploration, probability, and inference, in a style that makes the material accessible to teachers and students, and provides a model framework for in-service programmes to enhance the skills of teachers in the area of statistics and probability. More specific information on certain aspects of the QLP will be provided below.
  • Author(s):
    Gal, I., & Garfield, J. B.
    Year:
    1997
    Abstract:
    This book discusses the conceptual and pragmatic issues in the assessment of statistical knowledge, reasoning skills, and dispositions of students in diverse contexts of instruction, both at the college and precollege levels. It is designed primarily for academic audiences interested in the teaching and learning of statistics and mathemetics and for those involved in teacher education and training in diverse contexts.
  • Author(s):
    Taylor, S. E.
    Editors:
    Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., & Tversky, A.
    Year:
    1982
    Abstract:
    Every day the social perceiver makes numerous, apparently complex social judgments - Predicting another's behavior, attributing responsibility, categorizing an individual, evaluating anothers, estimating the power or influence of a person, or attributing causality. A central task of social psychology has been to determine how the social perceiver makes these judgments. Until recently, research on this topic was marked by a rationalistic bias, the assumption that judgments are made using thorough, optimal strategies (see, for example, Fischhoff, 1976, for discussion of this point). Errors in judgment were attributed to two sources: (a) accidental errors due to problems with information of which the perceiver was presumably unaware; and (b) errors which resulted from the irrational motives and needs of the perceiver. However, over a period of years, a growing body of evidence suggested not only that people's judgments and decisions are less complete and rational than was thought but that not all errors can be traced to motivational factors. Even in the absence of motives, judgments are often made on the basis of scant data, which are seemingly haphazardly combined and influenced by preconceptions (see, e.g., Dawes, 1976). These findings led to a revised view of the cognitive system. People came to be seen as capacity-limited, capable of dealing with only a small amount of data at a time. Rather than being viewed as a naive scientist who optimizes, the person was said to "satisfice" (Simon, 1957) and use shortcuts that would produce decisions and judgments efficiently and accurately.
  • Author(s):
    Laurie H. Rubel
    Year:
    2007
    Abstract:
    This article reports on a subset of results from a larger study which examined middle and high school students' probabilistic reasoning. Students in grades 5, 7, 9, and 11 at a boys' school (n=173) completed a Probability Inventory, which required students to answer and justify their responses to ten items. Supplemental clinical interviews were conducted with 33 of the students. This article describes students' specific reasoning strategies to a task familiar from the literature (Tversky and Kahneman, 1973). The results call into question the dominance of the availability heuristic among school students and present other frameworks of student reasoning.
  • Author(s):
    Bar-Hillel, M.
    Editors:
    Scholz, R. W.
    Year:
    1983
    Abstract:
    The article attempts to sketch a conceptual and experimental history of the base rate issue. The review distinguishes between a social judgment paradigm and a textbook paradigm. Theoretical explanations of the base rate phenomenon, i.e. the representativeness heuristics, confusing or inverting conditional probabilities, the specific factor, the causality factor, the vividness factor etc. are discussed with respect to these paradigms. On the basis of a report on various studies, the author hypothesizes that the different paradigms elicit different response tendencies, matching base rates on the one hand and judging representativeness on the other hand. She argues that on the causal structures accepted illustrating this by several examples. The consequences of this phenomenon for the role of normativeness and its (in-) determinacy are discussed.
  • Author(s):
    Borgida, E., & Brekke, N.
    Year:
    1981
    Abstract:
    This chapter focuses on the intuitive scientist's ability to use base rate or distributional information in two of these inferential tasks: causal analysis and prediction. It will be argued that essentially the same characteristics of human inference are implicated in these tasks.

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