Across all social science disciplines, but in particular public administration, there is a shared concern about the costs of using traditional random samples to generate data, and its impact on researchers' ability to engage in "quality" research. As a result of these costs, more academics, practitioners, and students are turning to…

This guide describes a five-step collaborative process that educators can use with other educators, researchers, and content experts to write or adapt questions and develop surveys for education contexts. This process allows educators to leverage the expertise of individuals within and outside of their organization to ensure a high-quality survey…

Survey sampling is fundamentally an applied field. The goal in this book is to put an array of tools at the fingertips of practitioners by explaining approaches long used by survey statisticians, illustrating how existing software can be used to solve survey problems, and developing some specialized software where needed. This book serves at least…

This methodological brief is designed to provide both program operators and researchers with practical advice about how to assess a program's implementation and impact. Adapted from an article that first appeared in "The Handbook of Youth Mentoring" (DuBois and Karcher, ed. 2005), the brief focuses on the evaluation of mentoring programs, but the…

This paper presents a method designed to assist practitioners in the interpretation of the practical significance of a statistically significant logistic regression coefficient is presented. To avoid the interpretation problems encountered when using the traditionally reported change in either the log odds or odds values, this method centers the…

Describes an activity on probability to serve mathematics and science objectives while including the use of art in a game. (ASK)

Suggestions for five activities are presented. They include: ideas for several student problem-solving projects; preparing a flowsheet and program for 10 coin and dice games; using word processor formatting commands to create word designs; creating sounds; and writing a program to print out sums indefinitely. (JN)

Explains an application of matrix algebra which involves probability matrices and weather predictions. Using probabilities of sunny or cloudy weather students can determine the effect weather on day one will have on subsequent days. (DH)

This report presents mathematics benchmarks organized into instructional sequences by topic. Each sequence is based upon an analysis of the order of content as it appears among a set of highly rated state standards. The report is intended to inform and guide state or district curriculum directors or others who, starting from content that is placed…

Presents examples illustrating how to teach statistics in connection with mathematical concepts. Describes using percentage problems and graphing problems in the classroom. (YP)

Describes the "Buffon's Needle" problem, which is calculating the probability that a needle will cross one of two separated lines. Calculates the probability when the length of the needle is greater than the space of the two lines. Provides an analytic solution and the results of a computer simulation. (YP)

Presents an application of the binomial distribution in which the distribution is used to detect differences between the sensory properties of food products. Included is a BASIC computer program listing used to generate triangle and duo-trio test results. (JN)

Discusses need for introducing material to educate students about the relationship of philosophy to physics and science in general, particularly in light of quantum mechanics. Suggesting the dual nature of electrons as a starting point and citing several supplemental texts, a demonstration is described to be used to introduce the topic. (JM)

Developed are simple recursion formulas for generating the exact distribution of the longest run of heads, both for a fair coin and for a biased coin. Discusses the applications of runs-related phenomena such as molecular biology, Markov chains, geometric variables, and random variables. (YP)

Describes a model for geometrical probability. Presents two examples of basic theories of probability using geometrical probability. Provides three problems using the described theorem. (YP)