Over the last two decades, statistics educators have made important changes to introductory courses. Current guidelines emphasize developing statistical thinking in students and exposing them to the entire investigative process in the context of interesting research questions and real data. As a result, many concepts (confounding, multivariable…

One of the main goals of statistics is to use data to provide evidence in support of an argument. This article will discuss some popular forms of writing assessments currently in use, to demonstrate the differences between the methods for structuring the students' learning to support their arguments with evidence. We share a model, which was…

While various studies suggest that informal statistical inference (ISI) can be developed by young students, more research is needed to translate this claim into a well-founded learning trajectory (LT). As a contribution, this paper presents the results of a cycle of design research that focuses on the design, implementation, and evaluation of the…

Statistical methods are an indispensable partner in all scientific work and in many other professional and commercial fields. So it is not surprising that statistics is widely studied at university. Yet most students never complete more than a single course in the discipline -- and that is usually early in their studies. In this situation…

Learners intending to enter some higher education (HE) institutions in South Africa write the National Benchmark Tests (NBTs) that are expected to provide a measure of their readiness for HE. A large gap exists between the quantitative literacy competencies of many of these learners and expectations at HE level. In this article I explore the…

Understanding and analyzing data is a crucial aspect of quantitative literacy in the 21st century, leading scholars and policy makers to push for more rigorous instruction in this area rooted in statistical investigation. In this study, we examine 144 upper-elementary mathematics lessons on data and statistics topics to assess the extent to which…

Understanding and analyzing data is a crucial aspect of quantitative literacy in the 21st century, leading scholars and policy makers to push for more rigorous instruction in this area rooted in statistical investigation. In this study, we examine 144 upper-elementary mathematics lessons on data and statistics topics to assess the extent to which…

The purpose of this study was to examine the predictive power of Academic and Learning Analytics models on the persistence, retention, and graduation rates for students enrolled in higher education institutions in the United States. Specifically, this study is concerned with the relationships between the present usage of Academic and Learning…

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the extent to which item response theory (IRT) proficiency estimation methods are robust to the presence of aberrant responses under the "GRE"® General Test multistage adaptive testing (MST) design. To that end, a wide range of atypical response behaviors affecting as much as 10% of the test items…

We present a variant of the Game of Pig to introduce the concepts of probability, simulation and expected value.

The present study investigated mediating and moderating relationships among school-level indicators of (a) exclusionary discipline, (b) the extent to which student voice is valued: (c) the level of student engagement, and (d) the grade tier of students served. The sample comprised 128 schools--72 elementary, 34 middle, and 22 high--from a large…

Background: Model-based meta-analysis (MBMA) is increasingly used to inform drug-development decisions by synthesising results from multiple studies to estimate treatment, dose-response, and time-course characteristics. Network meta-analysis (NMA) is used in Health Technology Appraisals for simultaneously comparing effects of multiple treatments,…

Studies combined in a meta-analysis often have differences in their design and conduct that can lead to heterogeneous results. A random-effects model accounts for these differences in the underlying study effects, which includes a heterogeneity variance parameter. The DerSimonian-Laird method is often used to estimate the heterogeneity variance,…

Because of the increasing use of business analytics to improve business processes, it is not difficult to argue the importance that undergraduate business students gain the ability to understand, interpret, and communicate statistics. However, a task that may be difficult for statistics instructors is to quickly demonstrate and convince business…

Mathematics and statistics major master graduates of a Finnish university answered a questionnaire about the master thesis process. Their response was analyzed to find connections of the topic and supervisor selection to the factors supporting and preventing the master thesis progress. Certainty of the thesis topic and of selecting a supervisor…