Literature Index

This paper focuses on developing students' informal ideas of inference and argumentation. This topic is of current interest to many researchers as well as teachers of statistics. We study fifth graders' learning processes in an exploratory interdisciplinary learning environment that uses the software TinkerPlots to scaffold students' statistical reasoning. The careful design of the learning trajectory based on increasing samples heuristics coupled with the unique features of TinkerPlots were found instrumental in supporting multiple dimensions of students reasoning about informal inference: multiplicative reasoning, aggregate reasoning, acknowledging the value of large samples, and accounting for variability. These were accompanied by greater ability to verbalize, explain and argue about data-based claims. In the light of the analysis, a description of what it may mean to begin reasoning about inference by young students is proposed, and implications to teaching, curriculum and research are drawn.

This article attempts to make a strong case for the use of Wiki to support collaborative learning experiences for students in the statistics classroom. Wiki is an innovative Website that allows all users to add and edit content with relative simplicity. Wiki features empowered learners and bottom-up organization that enable easy authoring of Web content, open access and unrestricted collaboration. We first introduce statistics as a collaborative discipline and therefore compatible with Wiki as a collaborative learning space. We then show evidence that collaboration can improve the learning of individuals in the statistics classroom as well as the whole class. Finally we demonstrate how Wiki can facilitate collaborative learning and bring about instructional change to improve student learning of statistics. We present several types of Wiki-based activities: collaborative writing, glossaries, discussion and review, statistical projects, self-reflective journals, and assessment.

The teaching of statistics to non-statisticians is a well established practice. Indeed such is the success with which the argument for the relevancy of statistics has been put that the practice has been extended to include undergraduate and postgraduate courses not just for engineers, nor only geographers and sociologists, but even such inveterately literary characters as historians! While the latter might be considered an extreme case, there is a common problem to be found in all courses of this nature. Put simply, it consists of convincing students of the relevance and utility of statistics to their particular discipline which in turn requires the conversion of plausible theory into credible practice, the plethora of validating bodies to be found in certain sectors of higher education, but too little time has been given to the more mundane, but no less important, task of actually teaching a course in a manner that successfully converts theory into practice. This paper describes the collaboration between a statistician and historian in teaching introductory statistics to history students.

With the ease and automation of data collection and plummeting storage costs, organizations are faced with massive amounts of data that present two pressing challenges: technical analysis of the data themselves and communication of the analytics process and its products. Although a plethora of academic and practitioner literature have focused on the former call, the latter challenge has received less attention. Here, we present strategies that we have found effective for bolstering communication skills of both undergraduate students and masters candidates at a business school. These approaches are based on the case studies that provide ample opportunity for oral communication among students with strong backgrounds in mathematics and introductory statistics, and solid training in written communication among student populations with less homogeneous preparation. We provide detailed discussions motivated by concrete examples executed across three courses.