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This article presents the results of a qualitative research with a group of 15 university students of social sciences on informal inferential reasoning developed in a computer environment on concepts involved in the confidence intervals. The results indicate that students developed a correct reasoning about sampling variability and visualized reasonable intervals of variability in a repeated sampling, at the same time students identified correct relationships between sample size and confidence level in the width of an interval and margin of error, and identified the randomness of a confidence interval. However, they had difficulties conceptualizing the confidence level as the percentage of intervals that capture the parameter in a sampling repeated under identical conditions. [Written in both Spanish and English. For the complete proceedings, see ED583608.]

Motivated by the increased statistics expectations for students and their teachers because of the widespread adoption of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, this study explores exemplary, in-service statistics teachers' professional identities using a theoretical framework informed by Gee (2000) and communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). Twelve exemplary, primarily Advanced Placement (AP) Statistics teachers participated in two semi-structured interviews. Findings indicate that these teachers developed teaching identities that cross the borders of mathematics and statistics, though these were not always recognized by administrators, other teachers, and parents. Two major contributing factors to the development of a statistics teaching identity--teachers' specialized knowledge and teacher isolation--are discussed. This work has implications for teacher preparation and professional development. [For the complete proceedings, see ED583608.]

This paper reports on the technological aspects of an international study in which secondary students engage in authentic data inquiries involving the posing, sharing, and critiquing of statistical word problems. This paper focuses on investigating the use of Web-based intranets to enable schools to conduct collaborative statistical investigations with students from other countries using the Internet. A series of exploratory case studies in classrooms in England, Australia, and Canada in which students posed and shared problems involving measures of central tendency are provided. The principal sources of evidence were the following: all materials posted to various areas of the project Intranet, video recordings, observers' notes, e-mail, and teacher interviews. The purpose of this paper is to discuss issues that have emerged in the present application of computer-mediated communication for fostering mathematical problem posing and critiquing. The central conclusion is that semi-private Web-based intranets present an excellent medium for publishing, sharing, and discussing mathematics problems created by students. Contains 59 references. (ASK)

This paper is based on the on-going research, work, and teaching carried out in the Mathematics Foundations Course (MFC) at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Teaching is a very intimate and rewarding experience for the mathematics lecturer as well as for the adult student. Mathematics lecturers and adults should be challenged by their experiences, and adult students of mathematics in particular should be empowered and rewarded for their efforts. Focus is placed on "Comparative Mathematics" education and teaching received from the perspectives of adult students' views about themselves as well as their views on the teachers who teach them. It is argued that much of the debate about adults' access to and performance in higher education concerns Humanities and Social Science students. Mathematics, despite its importance as an essential pre-requisite for studying science and technology, has been absent from the discussion. In their study, students reached conclusions about how adults see their own mathematical backgrounds, recorded and celebrated some of their achievements, and indicated some grounds for optimism about how likely they are to achieve in the field. They made suggestions about how adult learners of mathematics might best be prepared to make decisions about the suitability of mathematics courses for them. Students believe that this is a basis for some important practical conclusions for practitioners advising and supporting adult students. This study looked at a group of adults' return to Re-Learning Mathematics with the hope of gaining access to the BSc Mathematics and Statistics degree Course at Goldsmiths College, University of London. The paper concludes, by selecting three major theories that have some bearing on the selection of content and how it is taught, and characterizes these contexts as essentialism, encyclopedism, and pragmatism to include the general position in order to identify constituent curriculum theory. (Contains 36 references.) (Author/ASK)

Recent articles in behavioral sciences statistics literature address the need for modernizing graduate statistics programs and courses. This paper describes the development of one such course and evaluates student background for a class designed to provide a more consumer-oriented type of statistics instruction by focusing on the needs of students who are not statistics majors. The course for nonmajors focuses on key concepts for the effective understanding of research findings and uses only one statistical package, with the goal of increased understanding. As part of the development of the course, the importance of differences in student backgrounds, specifically quantitative skills was studied. Results with 28 students from 12 majors show that skills used are not differentiated by the entering levels of preparedness in quantitative areas. These results suggest that expansion of statistics courses to include applied statistical skills can be successful for students from different majors. (Contains 1 table and 21 references.) (SLD)

This paper reviews the literature on factors affecting students' performance in undergraduate statistics courses for the social sciences. Statistics anxiety and attitude have been linked to one's performance in statistics classes. Math factors, such as anxiety and attitude, may have an impact on performance in statistics classes, but the relationship is unclear. Computer experience reduces the anxiety and improves the attitudes of some students, but it is important that the experience be positive. The research on gender identity as a predictor of performance in statistics courses, is unclear, whereas gender differences in statistics achievement are tied to the outcome measures used (i.e. examination grades or course grades). Directions for future research, especially with regard to attitudes and gender identity, are discussed. (Contains 82 references.) (Author/SLD)

This paper reports the results of a research about the strategies and difficulties developed by university students in the process of modeling and simulating of random phenomena in an environment of a spreadsheet. The results indicate that students had difficulties to identify key components of the problems, which are crucial to formulate a simulation model. We have identified three different schemes to generate the results of the key components, which only one of them is correct; this scheme is based in the generation of random numbers. In consequence during this investigation it was observed that the process of the instrumentation of the spreadsheet to simulate random phenomena it is complex. [For the complete proceedings, see ED584829.]

Institutional performance benchmarking requires identifying a set of reference or comparator institutions. This paper describes a method by which an institution can identify other institutions that are most similar to itself using a methodology that identifies the nearest institutional neighbors based on a balanced set of metrics accessed from IPEDS [Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System] data. The Nearest Neighbor methodology is robust and flexible; it is easy to understand and to explain to others; and it is a hybrid method integrating judgment and analytical techniques. Use of the method is discussed, and it is compared to other methodologies such as Cluster Analysis. (Contains 1 table, 6 figures and 3 footnotes.)

This paper identifies the bibliographic and numeric databases on CD-ROM and computer diskette that should be most useful for investigators in communication, marketing, and communication education. Bibliographic databases are usually found in three formats: citations only, citations and abstracts, and full-text articles. Numeric databases are generally those with numbers and only a minimal amount of explanatory text. They include numeric databases of statistical and survey data, textual-numeric databases with explanatory text, and properties databases of dictionary and handbook-type data. For this paper, bibliographic databases on CD-ROM are categorized into university or academic, general or popular titles, and special titles. Eleven bibliographic databases, including ERIC and PsycLIT, are listed and described. Three major producers of numeric databases are the Census Bureau, Donnelly Marketing Information Services, and Nielsen Media Research. Nine such databases are described. CD-ROMs that serve as catalogs of available databases are discussed, as are databases available on diskette. The volumes of information available to researchers can no longer be accessed without including this and other computer technology. Nine figures illustrate the discussion. An appendix lists 13 resources on CD-ROM products. (Contains 37 references.) (SLD)

The plethora of different subfields in intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) are often difficult to integrate theoretically when analyzing how to design an intelligent tutor. Important principles of design are claimed by many subfields, including but not limited to: design, human-computer interaction, perceptual psychology, cognitive psychology, affective and motivation psychology, statistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive neuroscience, constructivist and situated cognition theories. Because these theories and methods sometimes address the same grain size and sometimes different grain sizes they may or may not conflict or be compatible and this has implications for ITS design. These issues of theoretical synthesis also have implications for the experimentation that is used by our various subfields to establish principles. Because our proposal allows the combination of multiple perspectives, it becomes apparent that the current "forward selection" method of theoretical progress might be limited. An alternative "backward elimination" experimental method is explained. Finally, we provide examples to illustrate how to build the bridges we propose. (Contains 1 table.) [This paper was published in: J. Kay & V. Aleven (Eds.), Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (pp. 534-543). Pittsburgh, PA.]

In addition to a literature review emphasizing definitions, statistics, and legislation concerning learning disabilities, this paper presents the results of a 1987 survey of academic libraries regarding their services for postsecondary learning disabled students. Responses (n=525) to the questionnaire indicated that, as a group, academic librarians lack sufficient knowledge of learning disabilities and generally do not provide services specifically designed to meet the needs of learning disabled college students. Recommendations for improving services for this population are offered. Analyses of the survey data for specific questions are provided in seven appendices. (16 references) (Author/BBM)

Building upon the work of Zieffler, Garfield, DelMas and Reading (2008) and others, we developed a framework for assessing informal inferential tasks in middle school mathematics textbooks. The framework both embodies the key recommendations for developing informal inferential reasoning and captures common trimming attributes, which lower the cognitive demand and opportunities to learn. Researchers believe that introducing inferential reasoning informally will assist students later in developing argumentation structures necessary for understanding formal methods (Wild & Pfannkuch, 1999). Inferential reasoning has long been a key learning goal of statistics education and provides access to viewing knowledge of core statistical concepts and reasoning about data distributions. Tools are needed to assess the fidelity of tasks in alignment with both national and research-based recommendations. [For the complete proceedings, see ED583989.]

This study focuses on the development of four tertiary introductory statistics students' informal inferential reasoning while engaging in data driven repeated sampling and resampling activities. Through the use of hands-on manipulatives and simulations with technology, the participants constructed empirical sampling distributions in order to investigate the inferences that can be drawn from the data. Students' developing reasoning of sampling and informal inference is reported as they move from repeated sampling methods to resampling methods, along with their reasoning of bootstrapping methods and how this reasoning was applied to make informal inferential claims. [For the complete proceedings, see ED583989.]

Instructors of statistics who teach non-statistics majors possess varied academic backgrounds, and hence it is reasonable to expect variability in their content knowledge, and pedagogical approach. The aim of this study was to determine the specific course(s) that contributed mostly to instructors' understanding of statistics. Courses reported were described as advanced or graduate level, and classified as application-based, math, multivariate, probability, and research. The majority, 9 (56%) attributed their understanding of statistics to either an application-based or research course, and of those, 7 (44%) reported negative feelings about their introductory courses. These findings underscore the importance of authentic activities, and constructivist pedagogy toward facilitating statistical literacy. Research is needed to determine the effect of instructors' academic preparation on their knowledge, attitudes, and practices. [This paper was published in: The Proceedings of ICOTS-7 (International Conference on the Teaching of Statistics). IASE (International Association for Statistical Education), 2006.]

A group of faculty that currently teach asynchronous online courses were motivated to ensure that course quality remained high. Many people have seen the online courses that throw some written content up on the web and then have some tests and quizzes and call it an online course. To the faculty, that is not suitable in many ways on many levels. Their goal was to look at how teachers can maintain and help others maintain high quality, media rich, interactive courses. They started by receiving an Ohio Learning Network Learning Community Initiatives grant. The full story is included in this paper. [For complete proceedings, see ED490133.]

This study investigated the attitudes toward statistics of graduate students who used a computer program as part of the instructional effort, which allowed for an individualized, self-paced, student-centered activity-based course. The 9 sections involved in the study were offered in 2001 through 2003, and there were 75 participants for whom there were complete data. Of these, 75% were female. The design of the study was a single-sample pretest-posttest with no control group since the students were taught by the same instructor. The instruction was the Statistics Attitude Survey (D. Roberts and E. Bilderback, 1980). Findings indicate differences in the distributions of ranks between pretest and posttest results. Most of these differences occurred as increases in the rankings marked at each end of the scales. That is, after the course, students felt more strongly that they agreed or disagreed with statements about some aspects of statistics. For example, students agreed more strongly that statistics would be useful to test the superiority of one method over another and that statistics provide a useful way to improve the quality of professional performance. They disagreed more strongly that one should be good at mathematics before attempting statistics and that statistics is too theoretical to be much use to the average professional. Comments from the open-ended evaluation forms may help explain survey results. Findings suggest that offering the course using computers may help improve students attitudes about certain aspects of statistics. The course syllabus is attached. (Contains 2 tables and 15 references.) (Author/SLD)

This study explores computer-meditated tutoring and a traditional tutoring model that is carried out on a face-to-face basis and investigates whether there is a difference in high school students' mathematics achievement. In this study, there was no statistically significant difference between the face-to-face and the computer-mediated tutored students' mathematical achievement, and there was no significant difference between the students who had less than 10 tutoring sessions and students who had more than 10 tutoring sessions with regard to their mathematical achievement. The results imply that computer-mediated tutoring can be as effective as face-to-face tutoring with mathematical concepts. (KHR)

The purpose of this study was to augment current knowledge regarding the antecedents of statistics anxiety and negative attitudes toward statistics among graduate students. The researchers also sought to investigate and identify promising methods for gathering and analyzing data in order to advance study in this emerging domain. Initially, 3 focus groups were planned for the 69 graduate students in 3 sections of an introductory statistics class, but many students were not able to participate in focus groups, and instead answered a questionnaire about statistics anxiety. Findings from the two focus groups and the student questionnaires were combined with student responses to two existing measures of statistics anxiety. Qualitative data affirmed the validity of much of the extant knowledge about statistics anxiety, but also disclosed new facets of knowledge, such as the importance of time management skills, and the identification of some previously undelineated factors. Among these is the fact that the availability of a dependable source with whom to compare answers reduces students anxiety and frustration. Embedded in these data are important hints for instructional design. The comparison of focus group and open-ended survey data suggests that focus groups provide a substantially richer substrate for the generation of fertile text. Written responses provided no themes that were not revealed in focus group transcripts. One appendix contains suggestions for conducting focus groups, and the other contains a reading list about mathematics and statistics anxiety. (Contains 7 figures, 7 tables, and 15 references.) (SLD)

The purpose of this research was to analyze recent statistics textbooks in the behavioral sciences in terms of their coverage of exploratory data analysis (EDA) philosophy and techniques. Twenty popular texts were analyzed. EDA philosophy was not addressed in the vast majority of texts. Only three texts had an entire chapter on EDA. None of the authors used the term "confirmatory factor analysis" or discussed model building or cross-validation. Seven texts contained references to published work by Tukey, but these references were mainly for specific techniques, most typically the stem-and-leaf display and box-and-whiskers plot, which were presented in 15 and 9 texts respectively. The paper ends with recommendations for integrating EDA into the fields of psychology and education. (Contains 1 table and 35 references.) (Author/SLD)

EncStat is a multimedia program under development that is designed to identify students with statistics anxiety or negative attitudes towards statistics. The purpose of this study was to develop a conceptual model of the current state of knowledge related to statistics anxiety intervention and to use that model to catalog and evaluate the small body of literature on which EncStat is based. The literature base was used to construct an initial conceptual model that included general categories of anxieties, theories, and models used as research foundations, empirical indicators, contextual factors, interventions, and outcomes. The overall number of coded elements in the concept map was examined by document, and the depth of coverage observed in the corpus of published literature was determined. The depth of coverage for each element of the conceptual map was reviewed. Findings show that a disproportionate number of documents focused on intervention, and a paucity of documents addressed theory and models. Findings also show the need to delineate additional categories of the conceptual model in some areas and the need to obtain more information on outcomes. An appendix lists the 32 literature sources reviewed. (SLD)