Within psychology and the social sciences, Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression is one of the most popular techniques for data analysis. In order to ensure the inferences from the use of this method are appropriate, several assumptions must be satisfied, including the one of constant error variance (i.e. homoskedasticity). Most of the training…

Background: Most of the studies in academic journals use p values to represent statistical significance. However, this is not a good indicator of practical significance. Although confidence intervals provide information about the precision of point estimation, they are, unfortunately, rarely used. The infrequent use of confidence intervals might…

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…

Formal inference, which makes theoretical assumptions about distributions and applies hypothesis testing procedures with null and alternative hypotheses, is notoriously difficult for tertiary students to master. The debate about whether this content should appear in Years 11 and 12 of the "Australian Curriculum: Mathematics" has gone on…

Objective: Financial strain may directly or indirectly (i.e., through perceived stress) impact students' psychological symptoms and academic and social integration, yet few studies have tested these relationships. The authors explored the mediating effect of perceived stress on the relationship between financial strain and 2 important outcomes:…

A resampling-based method of inference--permutation tests--is often used when distributional assumptions are questionable or unmet. Not only are these methods useful for obvious departures from parametric assumptions (e.g., normality) and small sample sizes, but they are also more robust than their parametric counterparts in the presences of…

Understanding the concept of the sampling distribution of a statistic is essential for the understanding of inferential procedures. Unfortunately, this topic proves to be a stumbling block for students in introductory statistics classes. In efforts to aid students in their understanding of this concept, alternatives to a lecture-based mode of…

Using Microsoft® Excel, several interactive, computerized learning modules are developed to illustrate the Central Limit Theorem's appropriateness for comparing the difference between the means of any two populations. These modules are used in the classroom to enhance the comprehension of this theorem as well as the concepts that provide the…

Using Microsoft Excel, several interactive, computerized learning modules are developed to demonstrate the Central Limit Theorem. These modules are used in the classroom to enhance the comprehension of this theorem. The Central Limit Theorem is a very important theorem in statistics, and yet because it is not intuitively obvious, statistics…

A brief, practical overview of "design effects" (DEFFs) is presented for users of the results of sample surveys. The overview is intended to help such users to determine how and when to use DEFFs and to compute them correctly. DEFFs are needed only for inferential statistics, not for descriptive statistics. When the selections for…

While technology has become an integral part of introductory statistics courses, the programs typically employed are professional packages designed primarily for data analysis rather than for learning. Findings from several studies suggest that use of such software in the introductory statistics classroom may not be very effective in helping…

There is much research that documents what many teachers know, that students struggle with many concepts in probability and statistics. This article presents two sample activities the authors use to help preservice teachers develop ideas about how they can use technology to promote their students' ability to understand mathematics and connect…