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,…

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…

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…

The National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) was asked by Technical and Further Education (TAFE) Directors Australia to consider, in a discussion paper for their conference held on the Gold Coast in September 2009, how a "tertiary education" sector impacts on the way people think about research and statistics. While a…

Mathematics and statistics play important roles in peoples' lives today. A day hardly passes that they are not bombarded with many different kinds of statistics. As consumers they see statistical information as they surf the web, watch television, listen to their satellite radios, or even read the nutrition facts panel on a cereal box in the…

The students in a basic course on probability and statistics in Trinidad demonstrated that the number of fatal highway accidents appeared to follow a Poisson distribution while the length of time between deaths followed exponential distribution. (MN)

A grouping procedure which systematically combines objects to satisfy a criterion specified by the investigator and groups those objects that are most alike first is discussed. Two such methods that can be easily demonstrated in the classroom setting with the aid of electronic calculators are presented. (MN)

This guide provides some basic statistical techniques that may be used in writing grant proposals, analyzing reports, and evaluating programs. Examples focus on rural Pennsylvania. The first section, Understanding Data, discusses definitions, codes, and data limitations. Definitions of Census Bureau geographic, demographic, housing, and…

Reviews pattern recognition techniques of multivariate statistical analysis as a means of data reduction. (SL)

Indexing is a tool that can be used with longitudinal, quantitative data for analysis of relative changes and for comparisons of changes among items. For greater accuracy, raw financial data should be deflated into constant dollars prior to indexing. This paper demonstrates the procedures for indexing, statistical deflation, and the use of…

The inservice teacher education materials described are for secondary level teachers who wish to increase their understanding of statistics and skill in presenting statistics as an understandable and relevant subject. Included in this informative report are the scope and sequence of module topics, activities and resources involved in use of the…

This document attempts to state in simple terms what is necessary as a minimum to ensure the adequate provision of educational statistics in developing countries. It has been developed for the use of Ministries of Education and other interested departments in developing countries to help them develop the basic set of statistics necessary for…

Presented are two examples including data sets for which calculating various elementary statistics will reveal something new about the data. The objective of these examples is to show the student what various statistics may reveal, or not reveal, about a given data set. (PK)

Data collection and analysis are frequently neglected by school leaders over the course of the decision-making process. All schools gather large amounts of information about students and teachers, but most data are used to satisfy administrative requirements rather than evaluate school improvement in a systematic fashion. Apprehension regarding…

Reports on a statistics course designed to emphasize real-world applications. The course is primarily lab-based and provides students with numerous opportunities to demonstrate mastery of their skills. The instruction is tightly focused on achievable goals and utilizes hands-on experience and computer tutorials. (MJP)