This paper is from Session 2C: Secondary school statistics education: ages 13 +

which comes under Topic 2: Statistics education at school level

On the delicate relation between informal statistical inference and formal statistical inference

Presenter

• Rolf Biehler (University of Paderborn, Germany)

Abstract

Informal inferential reasoning has become a topic of concern in statistics education. Laying intuitive grounds for more formal procedures or shaping the reasoning of younger students for whom formal inferential procedures will be too difficult to understand can be found among the aims. However, formal inferential reasoning as such is controversial itself: Bayesian and non-Bayesian ways of reasoning, Neyman-Pearsonian and Fisherian ways of hypothesis testing, confidence intervals. And: real applications of these procedures are context dependent. This raises questions with regard to which view of formal statistical inference we design preparatory informal inference activities for. The paper will critically discuss several approaches.