The first stage of a study in Québec enabled us to draw up a statistical portrait of probability teaching practices self-reported by 626 teachers at the elementary and secondary levels. For the second stage of the study, discussed here, we wanted to elaborate on some of the questionnaire answers and to discuss professional development avenues…

This article shows how the exciting new field of Machine Learning can be effectively introduced in a standard calculus sequence, once the students have been introduced to functions of several variables. This is an opportunity to engage students in a discussion of an application of calculus to an emerging field that the students encounter in their…

Aside from being culturally relevant, artificial intelligence is also supporting companies in making business decisions. Consequently, "workforce needs have shifted rapidly," resulting in a demand for applicants who are skilled in "data, analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence" (Miller and Hughes 2017). This…

Playing board games is known to improve pre-school student numeracy and many board games are used to motivate and explore concepts in probability. This study investigates whether college students in liberal arts mathematics courses assigned to play the board game "Settlers of Catan" develop a stronger grasp of basic probability concepts…

A number of probabilistic experiments are described to estimate e, p and v2, with results from computer simulations being used to investigate convergence. A number of possible classroom exercises and extensions are presented.

Online software systems are extensively used to give students practice on course content, especially in mathematics and physics courses. They offer instant feedback, and several of these systems are open source or very economical compared with hiring graders for traditional paper-and-pencil-based homework (PPH). In this article, the authors…

Typical difficulties in learning probabilistic subjects are concerned with big data, complicated formulas and inconvenient figures in statistical analyses. The present research considers the usage of innovative teaching methods (e.g. electronic summary of lectures, presentations of lecture courses, task solution templates, electronic training…

Informal inference is a critical practice for students to engage in if they are to understand formal statistical methods. However, during informal inference students often utilize complex ideas that many in-service teachers are not prepared for as they have not had the opportunity to think deeply about statistics and develop statistical knowledge…

While 'flipped' classrooms have been heralded as a valuable tool for student learning, little is known about the process by which students learn from the out-of-class resources. This study investigates 12 undergraduate students' sense-making activities while watching videos about topics in introductory statistics. Analysis of interview data…

The volume of data that can be captured and stored from students' everyday interactions with digital environments allows for the creation of models of student knowledge, skills, and attributes unobtrusively. However, models and techniques for transforming these data into information that is useful for educators have not been established. This…

E-Brock Bugs is a serious educational game (SEG) about probability which was created based on Devlin's design principles for games whose players adopt identities of mathematically able persons. This kind of games in which "players think and act like real world professionals" has been called epistemic. This article presents an empirical…

Research-based guidelines for learning variation exist (e.g., Franklin et al., 2007; Garfield, delMas, & Chance, 2007), but little is known about how teachers plan to teach standard deviation, or how these plans align with recent recommendations. In this article, we survey lesson plans designed by inservice and preservice secondary…

Data analysis requires subtle probability reasoning to answer questions like "What is the chance of event A occurring, given that event B was observed?" This generic question arises in discussions of many intriguing scientific questions such as "What is the probability that an adolescent weighs between 120 and 140 pounds given that…

Mathematics teachers continually look for ways to make the learning of mathematics more active and engaging. Hands-on activities, in particular, have been demonstrated to improve student engagement and understanding in mathematics classes. Likewise, many scholars have emphasized the growing importance of giving students experience with the…

If the prospective students of probability lack a background in mathematical proofs, hands-on classroom activities may work well to help them to learn to analyze problems correctly. For example, students may physically roll a die twice to count and compare the frequency of the sequences. Tools such as graphing calculators or Microsoft Excel®…