This paper is from Session 8B: Research on developing students’ statistical reasoning at secondary and tertiary levels

which comes under Topic 8: Research in statistics education

Other papers under session 8B ... 8B2: Inferential reasoning: learning to “make a call” in practice 8B3: Developing tertiary-level students’ statistical thinking through... 8B4: Students’ statistical reasoning about distribution across grade...

(Thursday 15th, 14:00-16:00)

Inferential reasoning: learning to “make a call” in theory

Presenter

• Chris Wild (University of Auckland, New Zealand)

Co-authors

• Maxine Pfannkuch (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
• Matt Regan (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
• Nicholas Horton (Smith College, Northampton, United States)

Abstract

Drawing on recent research in statistics education, the new New Zealand Statistics curriculum plans for three years of instruction in informal statistical inference to lay conceptual foundations for instruction in formal statistical inference. We discuss issues involved in formulating beginning versions of statistical inference and present some specific and highly visual proposals. These are built upon simple metaphors and novel ways of experiencing sampling variation. They are designed to give students practically useful tools for data analysis as well as underpinning more advanced and formal methods of making inferences to be encountered later. Our proposal uses visual comparisons to enable the inferential step to be made without taking the eyes off relevant graphs of the data. This allows the time and conceptual distances between questions, data and conclusions to be minimized, so that the most critical linkages can be made.

Other papers under session 8B ... 8B2: Inferential reasoning: learning to “make a call” in practice 8B3: Developing tertiary-level students’ statistical thinking through... 8B4: Students’ statistical reasoning about distribution across grade...