Many education researchers have advocated grounding abstract mathematical and scientific concepts in students' lived experiences, environmental interactions, and perceptions. This dissertation explores the causal effects of various grounding strategies in instructional settings, specifically on the topic of statistical sampling. The first chapter…

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…

Recommended learning goals for students in introductory statistics courses include the ability to recognize and explain the key role of randomness in designing studies and in drawing conclusions from those studies involving generalizations to a population or causal claims (GAISE College Report ASA Revision Committee, 2016). The purpose of this…

In observational studies, selection bias will be completely removed only if the selection mechanism is ignorable, namely, all confounders of treatment selection and potential outcomes are reliably measured. Ideally, well-grounded substantive theories about the selection process and outcome-generating model are used to generate the sample of…

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,…

A procedure modelling ideal classical and quantum gases is discussed. The proposed approach is mainly based on the idea that modelling and algorithm analysis can provide a deeper understanding of particularly complex physical systems. Appropriate representations and physical models able to mimic possible pseudo-mechanisms of functioning and having…

In this article we describe a semester-long project, based on the popular video game series Guitar Hero, designed to introduce upper-level undergraduate statistics students to statistical research. Some of the goals of this project are to help students develop statistical thinking that allows them to approach and answer open-ended research…

PSYCOM is a unique mixed media package which combines high interest projects on the computer with a written text of expository material. It goes beyond most computer-assisted instruction which emphasizes drill and practice and testing of knowledge. A project might consist of a simulation or an actual experiment, or it might be a demonstration, a…