This paper is from Session 3B: Statistics instructors’ knowledge of students’ development of fundamental statistics concepts

which comes under Topic 3: Education and development of staff who teach statistics

A certification system for statistics knowledge and skills by Japanese Statistical Society

Presenter

• Yoshinori Fujii (University of Miyazaki, Japan)

Co-authors

• Akinobu Takeuchi (Jissen Women's University, Japan)
• Hiromi Fukazawa (Tokyo Healthcare University, Japan)
• Michiko Watanabe (Keio University, Japan)

Abstract

In 2011 the Japan Statistical Society (JSS) started a set of examinations, called the JSS Certificate (JSSC), for students and professional statisticians or interviewers working in various fields related to statistics. The exams consist of four levels for students and two levels for professional survey workers and researchers. The exams try to assess not only statistical knowledge and skills, but also statistical reasoning and thinking. Recently the national curriculum of Japan has changed, expanding the amount of statistics content. In this paper we focus on the lower level student exams, which target students who graduated from high school (level 3) and junior high school (level 4). We show the properties of the exams during two years and some results. The results indicate some problems with statistics education in Japan.