This article presents a novel approach to introducing principal component analysis (PCA), using summary tables and descriptive statistics. Given its applicability across a variety of academic disciplines, this topic offers abundant opportunity for class discussion and activities. However, teaching PCA in an introductory class can be challenging…

To this date, few standardized tests measuring students' performance with regards to statistics exist. Only four tests have been proposed for college or university students. The goal of the present study is to investigate these tests. University professors or instructors experienced in teaching statistics were asked to list the concepts they think…

Teaching and learning undergraduate statistics has been a most challenging task for undergraduate psychology majors (Salkind, 2017). A seasoned statistics instructor consulted with a seasoned instructional designer on a method to improve a particularly demanding course using a performance improvement approach to address learning difficulties she…

This article presents the results of applying an educational sequence implemented with technological support on an LMS and focused on peer assessment that was designed specifically to address key concepts in statistics with first-year undergraduate students. Individualized information is available for a total of n=232 students to support the…

Current developments in the statistics community suggest that modern statistics education should be structured holistically, that is, by allowing students to work with real data and to answer concrete statistical questions, but also by educating them about alternative frameworks, such as Bayesian inference. In this article, we describe how we…

The use of cartoons, songs, and quotes can be a useful way to engage students in discussion and learning key concepts about quantifying the uncertainty in statistical estimates.

Many education researchers have advocated grounding abstract mathematical and scientific concepts in students' lived experiences, environmental interactions, and perceptions. This dissertation explores the causal effects of various grounding strategies in instructional settings, specifically on the topic of statistical sampling. The first chapter…

There is a growing interest in conducting research in educational mathematics in the area of the didactics of probability, where the main difficulties that students have in understanding the concepts related to statistical inference have been revealed. For this research, the concept of the empirical rule and a practical application created by…

Some researchers in mathematics education have studied the decisions professors make during classroom context activities. These decisions are explained by several factors: 1) how professors conceive the structure of mathematics; 2) what they know about the mathematical content; and, 3) what they consider the best didactic strategies to improve…

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…

The formula for the variance of a binomial distribution is both concise and elegant. However, it is often taught without reference to the underlying reasoning. That being the case, is it important, or useful, to understand why this formula can be used to calculate the requisite result? In this article, the author demonstrates a teaching sequence…

This article shares two activities geared toward students in middle school that engage students in analyzing measures of center, specifically the arithmetic mean, and using transnumerative thinking with the ultimate goal of improving students' statistical literacy. Both activities support the Common Core standard, 6.SP.B.5 "Summarize and…

This study attempted to develop a literature-informed discourse-based instructional approach and evaluated its effects on eleventh-grade students' conceptual and procedural understandings in probability and statistics. To this end, a quasi-experimental study that involved two control groups and one experimental group was used. One-way analysis of…

This article illustrates ways that dynamic software using some sophisticated techniques in Excel can be used to demonstrate fundamental ideas related to sampling distributions and their properties to increase student understanding of the concepts and methods in elementary statistics courses. The article considers such sampling distributions as the…

In an informal study, two versions of a story involving probability are introduced to undergraduates. The findings reveal that students have troubles detecting equal probabilities in a sampling scheme without replacement in which no information on earlier draws is available.