This report summarises the research activities and findings from the TLRI-funded project entitled "Visualising Chance: Learning Probability Through Modelling." This exploratory study was a 2-year collaboration among two researchers, two conceptual software developers/interactive graphics experts, three university lecturers/practitioners,…

The dice game Farkle provides an excellent basis for four activities that reinforce probability and expected value concepts for students in an introductory statistics class. These concepts appear in the increasingly popular AP statistics course (Peck 2011) and are used in analyzing ethical issues from insurance and gambling (COMAP 2009; Woodward…

Because new learning technologies are enabling students to build and explore probability models, we believe that there is a need to determine the big enduring ideas that underpin probabilistic thinking and modeling. By uncovering the elements of the thinking modes of expert users of probability models we aim to provide a base for the setting of…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present an algorithm to generate story problems via controlled parameters in the domain of mathematics. The generation process is performed in the problem generation module in the context of an intelligent tutoring system suggested in this paper. Controlling the question parameters allows for adapting the…

To evaluate the willingness of teachers to incorporate aquaponics in the classroom, we engaged teachers in a 6-week project. Participants in the experimental group maintained small-scale aquaponic systems. All teachers completed pretests and posttests, and exit surveys. Both groups (experimental and control) scored significantly higher on the…

By the time students reach the middle years they have experienced many chance activities based on dice. Common among these are rolling one die to explore the relationship of frequency and theoretical probability, and rolling two dice and summing the outcomes to consider their probabilities. Although dice may be considered overused by some, the…

Learning to solve a class of problems can be characterized as a search through a space of hypotheses about the rules for solving these problems. A series of four experiments studied how different learning conditions affected the search among hypotheses about the solution rule for a simple computational problem. Experiment 1 showed that a problem…

Real-world phenomena simulation models, which can be used to engage middle-school students with probability, are described. Links to R instructional material and easy-to-use code are provided to facilitate implementation in the classroom.

This is an activity for younger learners in which the concepts of relative frequency and probability are explored, illustrating how a creative, non-transmission teaching approach using bottle tops can enable students to develop their understanding in an engaging fashion and at almost no cost.

There exists considerable and rich literature on students' misconceptions about probability; less attention has been paid to the development of students' probabilistic thinking in the classroom. Grounded in an analysis of the literature, this article offers a lesson sequence for developing students' probabilistic understanding. In particular, a…

This study employs a uniquely multi-factorial, large-scale design to investigate baseline differences and the effects of a singular outdoor educational program on environmental attitudes, knowledge and behavior among primary and secondary school students educated in four different countries. Statistical modelling approaches employed country of…

The importance of learning mathematics can not be separated from its role in all aspects of life. Communicating ideas by using mathematics language is even more practical, systematic, and efficient. In order to overcome the difficulties of students who have insufficient understanding of mathematics material, good communications should be built in…

Assuming a coin is fair is common place in introductory statistical education. This article offers three approaches to test if a coin is fair. The approaches lend themselves to straightforward simulation studies that can enrich student understanding of joint probability and sample size requirements. Simulation studies comparing the relative merits…

The importance of raising students' competence in mathematics in a developing country such as Kenya cannot be overstated. This is because to produce professionals in areas such as engineering, medicine and accounting requires a good score in mathematics. Students that will further their studies in these areas will find that vectors is prerequisite…

The purpose of this study was to examine the impacts of embedding collaboration into a game with a self-explanation design for supporting the acquisition of light and shadow concepts. The participants were 184 fourth graders who were randomly assigned to three conditions: a solitary mode of the game with self-explanation, a collaborative mode with…