The purpose of this article is to provide educators with resources to help students establish a deeper understanding of the application and role of statistical analysis within the design and innovation process. Quantitative analyses are often taught and applied through design activities, especially during testing or experimenting phases of design.…

Research shows that playing games in the classroom improves students' attitudes toward mathematics, increases motivation to practice skills inside and outside the classroom, and increases learning by encouraging students of all levels to participate. Rutherford asserts that playing games encourages strategic mathematical thinking and supports…

Understanding the roles of random selection and random assignment in experimental design is a central learning objective in most introductory statistics courses. This article describes an activity, appropriate for a high school or introductory statistics course, designed to teach the concepts, values and pitfalls of random selection and assignment…

"Mathematical Thinking: From Assessment Items to Challenging Tasks" is a compilation of 36 problem-based lessons that encourage students to engage in productive struggle and deep thinking. Its 36 full-length lessons for grades 2-8 are each inspired by an actual test item from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).…

In the author's experience with this activity, students struggle with the idea of representativeness in probability. Therefore, this student misconception is part of the classroom discussion about the activities in this lesson. Representativeness is related to the (incorrect) idea that outcomes that seem more random are more likely to happen. This…

In the criminal justice system, defendants accused of a crime are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Statistical inference in any context is built on an analogous principle: The null hypothesis--often a hypothesis of "no difference" or "no effect"--is presumed true unless there is sufficient evidence against it. In this…

Courses: Beginning research methods and statistics courses, as well as advanced communication courses that require reading research articles and completing research projects involving statistics. Objective: Students will understand the difference between significant and nonsignificant statistical results based on p-value.

The new Common Core State Standards for Mathematics have been formulated to provide students with instruction that will help them acquire a thorough knowledge of math at their grade level, which will in turn enable them to move on to higher mathematics with competence and confidence. "Hands-on Activities for Teaching the Common Core Math…

"Shake, Rattle, & Roll" is a new program developed by The Actuarial Foundation with Scholastic, provides dynamic real-world math content designed to build student skills while showing students the relevance of math to understanding their world and planning for their future. Math skills are increasingly important for students. According to the U.S.…

Reasoning about and making sense of statistics and probability are essential to students' future success. This volume belongs to a series that supports National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' (NCTM's) "Focus in High School Mathematics: Reasoning and Sense Making" by providing additional guidance for making reasoning and sense making part of…

The purpose of these modules is to provide an introduction to the world of probability and statistics to accelerated mathematics students at the high school level. The modules also introduce students to real world math concepts and problems that property and casualty actuaries come across in their work. They are designed to be used by teachers and…

Discusses the relative effects of sample size and proportion in the use of sampling to investigate a population. Concludes that the nature of probability and statistics is such that in many situations, the reality is counterintuitive to many generally well-educated people who are not statistically trained. Discusses implications for educators.…

The purpose of this note is to give a construction method for measures of central tendency and dispersion of a set of data on the basis of some symmetric multivariate functions and distance functions. Several examples regarding the known and new measures are presented. (Author/MM)

This booklet suggests activities that reflect findings from recent educational research on curriculum, assessment, and instruction, as well as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Standards pertaining to probability and statistics. Each teacher's guide for the 13 hands-on activities includes objectives stemming from NCTM…

A way of presenting the Poisson process and deriving the Poisson distribution for upper-division courses in probability or mathematical statistics is presented. The main feature of the approach lies in the formulation of Poisson postulates with immediate intuitive appeal. (MNS)