In recent years several mathematics education researchers have attempted to analyse students' arguments using a restricted form of Toulmina's ["The Uses of Argument," Cambridge University Press, UK, 1958] argumentation scheme. In this paper we report data from task-based interviews conducted with highly talented postgraduate mathematics students,…

A study investigated whether readers infer automatically highly likely consequences of a state modification, intentional (action) or non intentional (event), described in short texts. Subjects, 48 psychology undergraduates at Paris VIII University (France), read explicit, predictable, or control forms of short passages using a Rapid Serial Visual…

In many practical applications of item response theory, the parameters of overlapping subsets of test items are estimated from different samples of examinees. A linking procedure is then employed to place the resulting item parameter estimates onto a common scale. It is standard practice to ignore the uncertainty associated with the linking step…

Probability-based inference in complex networks of interdependent variables is an active topic in statistical research, spurred by such diverse applications as forecasting, pedigree analysis, troubleshooting, and medical diagnosis. This paper concerns the role of Bayesian inference networks for updating student models in intelligent tutoring…

Educational test theory consists of statistical and methodological tools to support inferences about examinees' knowledge, skills, and accomplishments. The evolution of test theory has been shaped by the nature of users' inferences which, until recently, have been framed almost exclusively in terms of trait and behavioral psychology. Progress in…

This paper explores the issues surrounding the study of higher education, usually involving the analysis of structural-functionalism, to less tradition-bound areas representing idealism. It examines these issues through the theoretical framework of symbolic interactionism which, it is noted, rests in the interpretive paradigm. The paper begins…

Back-of-the-envelope problems call for approximate calculations of quantities that can be related to information in a person's knowledge but are not solved precisely. These problems provide an opportunity for the study of processes and the role of general knowledge in ill-defined problem solving. Subjects with advanced and intermediate knowledge…

This study examines the ability of 20 5- and 6-year-old children to determine whether an inference could reliably be made or whether a problem was undecidable. Children were given a random series of 8 decidable and 16 undecidable problems in which they had to determine in which of 2 houses a target character could be found. There were two…

In the process of developing a conditionally-dependent item response theory (IRT) model, the problem arose of modeling an underlying multivariate normal (MVN) response process with general correlation among the items. Without the assumption of conditional independence, for which the underlying MVN cdf takes on comparatively simple forms and can be…

An index that measures the degree of comfort a researcher has relative to statistical inference application is proposed. The index is calculated by selecting and weighting components inherent in the conduct of hypothesis tests and confidence intervals, and its values range from zero to one. To organize the components of the index, inference…

The critical examination of society's circumstances, institutions, and cultural predispositions and values can help detect problems and injustices and can suggest opportunities for improvement. Neo-Marxist critical theorists of the Frankfurt school are committed to work of this kind, but their perspective is informed by Marxian precepts, and their…

Beyond the first several thousand most commonly used words in a language, direct vocabulary instruction is not efficient. Use of inferential skills then becomes the most effective way of learning new vocabulary; it is the way native speakers build their 60,000 word vocabularies. Because the skill is not automatically transferable, it must be…

A study compared text-connecting inferencing and text integration skills of hearing-impaired (HI) students who had surpassed the documented fourth-grade plateau in reading comprehension with those who had not. These groups were also compared to skilled and less-skilled normal-hearing (NH) fourth graders. Subjects read a four-page narrative and…

A study assessed the level of workers' knowledge of their pension plan's provisions related to early and normal retirement. The data used were from the 1983 Survey of Consumer Finances. The survey, which was based on a nationwide sample of more than 3,800 households and more than 1,000 public and private pension plans that covered them, asked the…

Introductory statistics texts give extensive coverage to two-sided inferences in hypothesis testing, interval estimation, and one-sided hypothesis tests. Very few discuss the possibility of one-sided interval estimation at all. Even fewer do so in any detail. Two of the business statistics texts we reviewed mentioned the possibility of dividing…