Developing students’ reasoning about samples and sampling variability as a path to expert statistical thinking

Joan Garfield, Laura Le, Andrew Zieffler, Dani Ben-Zvi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This paper describes the importance of developing students’ reasoning about samples and sampling variability as a foundation for statistical thinking. Research on expert–novice thinking as well as statistical thinking is reviewed and compared. A case is made that statistical thinking is a type of expert thinking, and as such, research comparing novice and expert thinking can inform the research on developing statistical thinking in students. It is also posited that developing students’ informal inferential reasoning, akin to novice thinking, can help build the foundations of experts’ statistical thinking.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)327-342
Number of pages16
JournalEducational Studies in Mathematics
Volume88
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2015

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2014, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.

Keywords

  • Expert and novice thinking
  • Informal inferential reasoning
  • Informal statistical inference
  • Sampling variability
  • Statistical thinking

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Mathematics
  • Education

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