This article provides conceptual ideas, data, and exercises, for integrating original sources of recent, state of the art, world-class life science research in the undergraduate mathematics curriculum and classroom. To this end, this article shows how one of the main goals of calculus in the life sciences, fitting parameters to data and assessing…

The "Borel" board game consists of a series of experiments involving dice rolls, coin flips, or drawing colored balls from bags. Before each experiment is conducted, each player bets for or bets against a statement regarding the random outcome. We suggest that the collection of "Borel" experiments be used as a resource to…

A formula is derived for a 'two-dice horse race', in which two ordinary dice are thrown repeatedly and each time the sum of the scores determines which horse (numbered 2 to 12) moves forward one space. This paper answers a question posed in a former "Teaching Statistics" article, and demonstrates the value of simulation.

Research on statistical education in childhood is recent in Brazil. The research has been mainly driven by curriculum reforms and the creation of research groups that investigate teaching, learning, and teacher education practices. The present paper emerges from this scenario and has the aim of investigating practices of creative insubordination…

There is much debate about the place of probability in an introductory statistics course. While students may or may not use probability distributions in their post-collegiate lives, they will likely be faced with day-to-day decisions that require a probabilistic assessment of risk and reward. This paper describes an innovative way to teach…

We describe how we used puppets as tools to draw 9 to 10-year-old students into conversations about probability. Puppets supported classroom discourse by putting forth probabilistic arguments for critique, introducing extreme and unusual examples of concepts, and introducing an element of surprise.

The transition from the probability mass function for discrete random variables to the probability density function for continuous random variables is not straightforward, especially to students from the health and social sciences. An R Shiny application was created to assist the learning process of probability density function.

Probability and chance are essential concepts, not just in statistics but in real life. We present an adaptable activity which investigates what we mean by bias, how we can identify bias, and how we can use it to our advantage!

Undergraduate students tend to struggle with probability in their introductory statistics course. Probability problem solving requires several steps. First, students must make sense of the probability scenario, then determine the appropriate probability rules, and finally, execute the procedures to solve the problem. With no previous exposure to…

The aim of this paper is to approach the teaching of the Poisson distribution in a friendly and amusing way. It constitutes a common practice to adopt the main probability distributions in order to predict results of sport events and to estimate the win return of betting activities (Chalikias 2009). In particular, by using the Poisson…

Aotearoa New Zealand is a super diverse nation in terms of the ethnicities of its people and languages spoken. With an increased rate of immigration from various parts of the world, the presence of multiple languages in many domains of social life is a reality. Consequently, classrooms are now places where learners have different linguistic and…

The goal of the paper is to pay attention to some important techniques and approaches including adequate designations as a tool for unambiguous understanding and a key to success in solving problems, vivid visual images as a mnemonic techniques, and special formulas as a universal tool for solving typical problems, when teaching medical students…

Students studying statistics often misunderstand what statistics represent. Some of the most well-known misunderstandings of statistics revolve around null hypothesis significance testing. One pervasive misunderstanding is that the calculated p-value represents the probability that the null hypothesis is true, and that if p < 0.05, there is…

Mathematics curricula have traditionally focused on content knowledge, often in the form of a scope and sequence of increasingly difficult mathematics. The importance of using and applying mathematics is recognised in the current Australian Curriculum Mathematics (AC: M) as 'proficiencies' that are intended to be integrated with the content. There…

Emphasis in teaching and learning statistics has shifted from memorizing formulas and procedures to investigating situations, creating models, and using data to understand problems. The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) (NGA Center and CCSSO 2010) Grade 8 Statistics and Probability content standards drive this point home.…