Simulation-based teaching can be a valuable method for learning statistical concepts. Its practical implementation for health-related subjects is seldomly evaluated. We propose a simulation-based approach to teach interaction effects in a postgraduate biostatistics course. We describe the steps involved in organizing and implementing a…

Though statistical testing is commonly practiced, the logic of statistical tests is confusing, thinking about distributions is difficult, and the way statisticians formulate expectations as probability distributions is poorly understood. To support instruction, the statistics education community has increasingly utilized simulation-based…

Basic knowledge of ideas of causal inference can help students to think beyond data, that is, to think more clearly about the data generating process. Especially for (maybe big) observational data, qualitative assumptions are important for the conclusions drawn and interpretation of the quantitative results. Concepts of causal inference can also…

Interactive web-based applets have proven effective in teaching statistics. This article presents new implementations of web-based applets primarily targeting a traditional introductory statistics course in two particular areas: (a) using real-time response data to engage students in simulations and (b) generating randomized datasets for…

Statistical thinking is essential to understanding the nature of scientific results as a consumer. Statistical thinking also facilitates thinking like a scientist. Instead of emphasizing a "correct" procedure for data analysis and its outcome, statistical thinking focuses on the process of data analysis. This article reviews frequentist…

Data Analytics has grown dramatically in importance and in the level of business deployments in recent years. It is used across most functional areas and applications, some of the latter including market campaigns, detecting fraud, determining credit, identifying assembly line defects, health services and many others. Indeed, the realm of…

This study contributes to the call for influencing practice by increasing attention to how learning environments can be designed to support learning in statistical inference. We report on a design experiment in secondary school (students 14-16 years old), that resulted in a set of lessons with the learning goal of teaching students how to apply…

In this paper, the SOLO taxonomy is used to identify different levels of student understanding of the statistical concepts associated with sampling distribution. This study was part of a research project investigating students' conceptual understanding of concepts of hypothesis testing taught with the support of simulation learning activities. The…

We designed an asynchronous undergraduate introductory statistics course that focuses on simulation-based inference at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In this article, we describe the process we used to design the course and the structure of the course. We also discuss feedback and comments we received from students on the course evaluations,…

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.

In regression analysis courses, there are many settings in which the response variable under study is continuous, strictly positive, and right skew. This type of response variable does not adhere to the normality assumptions underlying the traditional linear regression model, and accordingly may be analyzed using a generalized linear model…

The negative hypergeometric distribution is often not formally studied in secondary or collegiate statistics in contexts other than drawing cards without replacement. We present a different context with the potential of engaging students in simulating and exploring data.

The Monte Carlo method is one of the basic simulation statistical methods which can be used both to demonstrate basic probability and statistical concepts as well as to analyse the behaviour stochastic models. The introduction part of the article provides a brief description of the Monte Carlo method. The main part of the article is concentrated…

Students learn many concepts in the introductory statistics course, but even our most successful students end up with rigid, ritualized knowledge that does not transfer easily to new situations. In this article we describe our attempt to apply theories and findings from learning science to the design of a statistics course that aims to help…