This activity introduces students to the need for and rationale of hypothesis testing, using a basketball scenario familiar to even the most casual of fans.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to differentiate effects of phonotactic probability, the likelihood of occurrence of a sound sequence, and neighborhood density, the number of words that sound similar to a given word, on adult word learning. A second purpose was to determine what aspect of word learning (viz., triggering learning, formation…

In the nineteenth century many people tried to seek a value for the most famous irrational number, [pi], by means of an experiment known as Buffon's needle, consisting of throwing randomly a needle onto a surface ruled with straight parallel lines. Here we propose to extend this experiment in order to evaluate other irrational numbers, such as…

This article introduces and explains probability games from diverse cultures. Activities are described and teacher-ready materials are included. (Contains 7 figures.)

This paper is based upon a laboratory exercise designed for biology students in secondary schools or those taking introductory biology laboratory courses in colleges and universities. This exercise requires a set of calipers, a calculator and populations of snail shells collected either from the wild or obtained from a biological supply house. The…

Dynamic assessment (DA), as a pro-learning form of assessment, has been discussed in the educational literature for three decades or more. As a concept it has yet to be picked up in any significant way by the more established second language testing/assessment literature published in the English language. There is, however, every reason to believe…

Purpose: In an attempt to more thoroughly describe aggressive behavior in nursing home residents with dementia, we examined background and proximal factors as guided by the Need-Driven Dementia-Compromised Behavior model. Design and Methods: We used a multivariate cross-sectional survey with repeated measures; participants resided in nine randomly…

Contingency tables, and their associated statistical tests, are frequently used in educational and social research. Popular statistical tests used in contingency table analyses include the Pearson chi-square test and the likelihood ratio chi-square test. These two tests are chi-square distributed under large sample conditions. However, when a…

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…

The role of the response probability convention in reporting results from the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey is explored, using interviews with more than 26,000 adults and young adults. In order to summarize what respondents of a particular proficiency can do, it is convenient to adopt a convention for a sufficient response probability that…

For much of the twentieth century, Markov theory and Markov processes have been widely accepted as valid ways to view statistical variables and parameters. In the complex realm of online searching, where researchers are always seeking the route to the best search strategies and the most powerful query terms and sequences, Markov process analysis…

Item response theory (IRT) is based on the assumption that a direct relationship exists between an examinee's total performance on a set of items and the difficulty of each item on the test. The Rasch model represents this relationship mathematically on an equal interval scale. This paper argues that IRT, under the required conditions, provides…

A Bayesian approach for finding latent classes in data is discussed. The approach uses finite mixture models to describe the underlying structure in the data and demonstrate that the possibility of using full joint probability models raises interesting new prospects for exploratory data analysis. The concepts and methods discussed are illustrated…

The National Household Education Survey (NHES) is a data collection system of the National Center for Education Statistics. The NHES is a telephone survey of the noninstitutionalized civilian population using households selected using random digit dialing methods. Approximately 60,000 households are screened for each administration, and people who…

The present investigation employed Kahneman and Tversky's (1973) "Cab Problem" and the "Shuttle Problem" (a modified version of the former) in two separate experiments to further examine the impact of several variables on the utilization of base-rate information, and to what extent gender is related to the utilization of…