The authors discuss the use of surveys for collecting data from a population sample and emphasise the importance of being careful with the language of data collection. [For "The Data Files 5: Graphs for Exploring Relationships," see EJ1355504.]

The Earth's oceans are home to a diverse array of life, from large marine mammals to microscopic organisms. Among the most important are the marine phytoplankton, which comprise the basis of marine food webs, and also produce a large percentage of the Earth's oxygen through photosynthesis. Although the vast majority of phytoplankton are essential…

Although the use of real-world data sets is encouraged when teaching statistics, it can be difficult for instructors to find meaningful data for introducing students to univariate descriptive statistics such as the mean, median, and percentiles. The recent lead contamination of the water supply in Flint, Michigan, provides a real-life data set…

Sample survey design is a topic usually taught to students undertaking a minor or major in statistics in the latter part of their bachelor's degree. This article describes an assessment project that fosters active learning and helps to develop a set of essential skills for statistical practice. The project is completed in pairs and submitted in…

The statistical concept of sampling is often given little direct attention, typically reduced to the mantra "take a random sample". This low resource and adaptable activity demonstrates sampling and explores issues that arise due to biased sampling.

Research shows that students often struggle with understanding empirical sampling distributions. Using hands-on and technology models and simulations of problems generated by real data help students begin to make connections between repeated sampling, sample size, distribution, variation, and center. A task to assist teachers in implementing…

Young children are naturally curious and constantly exploring the world around them. Combining this curiosity with the outdoors and nature for science skill development has many advantages for young learners. As children develop an enhanced understanding of the natural world, they are also developing explanations of how things work. Allowing…

There is considerable research on the difficulties students have in conceptualising individual concepts of probability and statistics (see for example, Bryant & Nunes, 2012; Jones, 2005). The unit of work developed for the action research project described in this article is specifically designed to address some of these in order to help…

Field-based undergraduate geography courses provide numerous pedagogical benefits including an opportunity for students to acquire employable skills in an applied context. This article presents one unique approach to teaching geographic field methods using paleoecological research. The goals of this course are to teach students key geographic…

Statistical studies are referenced in the news every day, so frequently that people are sometimes skeptical of reported results. Often, no matter how large a sample size researchers use in their studies, people believe that the sample size is too small to make broad generalizations. The tasks presented in this article use simulations of repeated…

This article shows that when applying resampling methods to the problem of comparing two proportions, students can discover that whether you resample with or without replacement can make a big difference.

The results of a simulation conducted by a research team involving undergraduate and high school students indicate that when data is symmetric the student's "t" confidence interval for a mean is superior to the studied non-parametric bootstrap confidence intervals. When data is skewed and for sample sizes n greater than or equal to 10,…

This article describes a simulation activity that can be used to help students see that the estimator "S" is a biased estimator of [sigma]. The activity can be implemented using either a statistical package such as R, Minitab, or a Web applet. In the activity, the students investigate and compare the bias of "S" when sampling from different…

Courses: Beginning research methods and statistics courses, as well as advanced communication courses that require reading research articles and completing research projects involving statistics. Objective: Students will understand the difference between significant and nonsignificant statistical results based on p-value.

Sampling, very generally, is the process of learning about something by selecting and assessing representative parts of that population or object. In the inquiry activity described here, students learned about sampling techniques as they estimated the number of trees greater than 12 cm dbh (diameter at breast height) in a wooded, discrete area…