The aim of the current study was to investigate the statistical literacy of seventh grade students regarding the concepts of average and variation on bar and line graphs presented in alternative real-life contexts. To this end, the statistical literacy levels of the seventh grade students were initially determined. Subsequently, definitions,…

Today, most medical research depends on statistics, and interpreting these is crucial as the world tries to improve health outcomes. Medical students are at the front line in this effort but many have negative attitudes toward statistics. To assess this and offer recommendations, this study evaluates the attitudes of medical students in Riyadh,…

While some Canadian universities have a long history in the provision of data services, that was not the norm in Canada, especially in small universities and colleges. To maximize the use of data by students and researchers in academia, it was evident that increased education, resources, and tools were required to support those delivering data…

A classroom activity is presented, which can be used in teaching students statistics with an easily generated, large, real world data set. The activity consists of analyzing a video recording of an object. The colour data of the recorded object can then be used as a data set to explore variation in the data using graphs including histograms,…

In recent years, research on teaching and learning of statistics emphasized that the interpretation of data is a complex process that involves cognitive and technical aspects. However, it is a human activity that involves also contextual and affective aspects. This view is in line with research on affectivity and cognition. While the affective…

Statistical literacy is complex and multifaceted. In every country, education and numeracy are a function of a multitude of factors including culture, history, and societal norms. Nevertheless, since the launch of the International Statistical Poster Competition (ISLP) in 1994, a number of patterns have emerged to suggest there are some common or…

The ability to interpret graphs is highly important in modern society, but has proven to be a challenge for many people. In this paper, two teaching methods were used to remediate one specific misinterpretation: the area misinterpretation of box plots. First, we used refutational text to explicitly state and invalidate the area misinterpretation…

With the ease and automation of data collection and plummeting storage costs, organizations are faced with massive amounts of data that present two pressing challenges: technical analysis of the data themselves and communication of the analytics process and its products. Although a plethora of academic and practitioner literature have focused on…

Given that transportation is an essential topic in any Physics and Society or Energy course, it is necessary to have useful statistics on transportation in order to have a reasoned discussion on this topic. And a major component of the transportation picture is the automobile. This paper presents updated transportation statistics for American…

For many years, students have been taught to visualise data by drawing graphs. Recently, there has been a growing trend to teach statistics, particularly statistical concepts, using interactive and dynamic visualisation tools. Free down-loadable teaching and simulation software designed specifically for schools, and more general data visualisation…

We discuss the learning goals, content, and delivery of a University of Plymouth intensive module delivered over four weeks entitled MATH1608PP Understanding Big Data from Social Networks, aimed at introducing students to a broad range of techniques used in modern Data Science. This module made use of R, accessed through RStudio, and some popular…

The use, and misuse, of statistics is commonplace, yet in the printed format data representations can be either over simplified, supposedly for impact, or so complex as to lead to boredom, supposedly for completeness and accuracy. In this article the link to the video clip shows how dynamic visual representations can enliven and enhance the…

Being able to characterize the size of raindrops is useful in a number of fields including meteorology, hydrology, agriculture and telecommunications. Associated with this article are data sets containing surface (i.e. ground-level) measurements of raindrop size from two different instruments and two different geographical locations. Students may…

Epidemiology is the study of the distribution of disease in human populations. This means that authentically teaching primary data collection in epidemiology is difficult as students cannot easily access suitable human populations. Using an action research methodology, this paper studied the use of a virtual human population (called "The…

Open book assessment is not a new idea, but it does not seem to have gained ground in higher education. In particular, not much literature is available on open book examinations in mathematics and statistics in higher education. The objective of this paper is to investigate the appropriateness of open book assessments in a first-year business…