Common sense is a dynamic concept and it is natural that our (statistical) common sense lags behind the development of statistical science. What is not so easy to understand is why common sense lags behind as much as it does. We conduct a survey among Japanese students and provide examples and tentative explanations of a number of statistical…

Take a family of independent events. If some of these events, or all of them, are replaced by their complements, then independence still holds. This fact, which is agreed upon by the members of the statistical/probability communities, is tremendously well known, is fairly intuitive and has always been frequently used for easing probability…

Using the famous Birthday problem, we present here a practical activity that allows students to perceive the basic reasoning behind simulation and explore its potential. Through a playful approach with probabilities, students are led along a path that illustrates difficulties with intuition and introduces them to theoretical results for sample…

Well-designed digital games can deliver powerful experiences that are difficult to provide through traditional instruction, while traditional instruction can deliver formal explanations that are not a natural fit for gameplay. Combined, they can accomplish more than either can alone. An experiment tested this claim using the topic of statistics,…

Base-rate neglect refers to the tendency for people to underweight base-rate probabilities in favor of diagnostic information. It is commonly held that base-rate neglect occurs because effortful (Type 2) reasoning is required to process base-rate information, whereas diagnostic information is accessible to fast, intuitive (Type 1) processing…

This article explores the intuitions of secondary education majors regarding probability. This is accomplished by administering a two-question instrument to 113 participants. Their responses to these questions, and more importantly the explanations they provide for these answers, are analysed. The conclusions drawn may be informative to teachers…

An activity in a college statistics class had students go to a field of grass and clover and use a variety of estimation, probability, sampling, distribution, and calculation techniques for determining the number of flowers in the field. The activity focused on the discovery process, encouraged abstract reasoning, and was pleasurable. (MSE)

Concerns about students' difficulties in statistical reasoning led to a study which explored form five (14- to 16-year-olds) students' ideas in this area. The study focussed on descriptive statistics, graphical representations, and probability. This paper presents and discusses the ways in which students made sense of information in graphical…

A study of the effect of reading a recent clinical study on pediatricians', pediatric residents', and family practitioners' decisions concerning treatment of a common, potentially serious problem revealed a considerable influence but physician difficulty in using probability data and reliance on intuition rather than calculation. (MSE)