This paper is from Session 8E: Research on developing students’ probabilistic reasoning

which comes under Topic 8: Research in statistics education

Characteristics of students’ probabalistic reasoning in a simulation-based statistics course

Presenter

• Aaron Weinberg (Ithaca College, United States)

Abstract

Although students in traditional introductory college statistics courses see a frequentist definition of probability, they are rarely asked to use this definition, instead relying on technology to conduct parametric tests. In contrast, in a simulation- and randomization-based statistics course, the relative frequency of simulated outcomes becomes the central focus of the process of drawing inferences. In this study, eight college students who were enrolled in an introductory simulation-based statistics course were interviewed and asked to describe sampling distributions and make inferences; the results and analysis describes the ways they used and appeared to think about empirical probabilities. Although the students appeared to be able to make connections between various aspects of inferential reasoning, they also encountered difficulties that may be related to their focus on empirical probabilities.