Teaching Statistics and Probability

Teaching Statistics and Probability
Exploration of important conceptual underpinnings, common misconceptions and students' ways of thinking, appropriate use of technology, and instructional practices to support and assess the learning of probability and statistics.
MTHED
301
 Hours3.0 Credit, 3.0 Lecture, 0.0 Lab
 PrerequisitesMTHED 177 & STAT 121
 RecommendedMthEd 276.
 NoteA score of 5 on the AP Statistics Exam may substitute for the Stat 121 prerequisite.
 TaughtFall, Winter
 ProgramsContaining MTHED 301
Course Outcomes

Designing a Study and Sampling

Students understand the advantages and disadvantages of study design and sampling design so that they can design an empirical study to effectively answer research questions.

Summarizing and Representing

Students can evaluate and justify the use of different measures of central tendency, different measures of dispersion and different data representations depending on the nature of the data and purpose of the measure or representation.

Testing Claims and Drawing Conclusions

Students can explain the underlying ideas of various statistical tests, articulate how real-world questions relate to these tests, explain how these tests are used to make claims, predictions, and conclusions, and identify common misconceptions or theoretical issues in interpreting the results of these tests.

Probability

Students can identify probabilistic situations, model probabilistic situations using multiple representations, understand and calculate theoretical and empirical probabilities, identify common misconceptions about probability, and predict and explain the shape of sampling distributions given population distributions.

Student Statistical Thinking

Students are familiar with K-12 students' initial conceptions and misconceptions of probability and statistical concepts and know many instructional principles and strategies to help students overcome misconceptions and to develop robust concepts in these fields.