Introducing students to the application of statistics and investigative methods in political science

This exercise introduces students to the application of statistics and its investigative methods in political science. It helps students gain a better understanding and a greater appreciation of statistics through a real world application.     

Bayesian statistics in the classroom: Introducing shrinkage with basketball statistics and the internet movie database

This article promotes Bayesian intuition by introducing the concept of shrinkage with some motivational examples involving basketball statistics of Rudy Gobert and movie rankings from the Internet Movie Database. Supplementary and fully automated R code is provided to allow students to explore shrinkage in this dataset on their own. The content is targeted at the first-year undergraduate level. Students with prior exposure to R would most benefit from the supplementary R code.     

First steps into understanding teachers' visual perception of classroom events

Student-teachers struggle to become competent at classroom management. To do so, Berliner (2001) and Feldon (2007) argue for the significance of speedy and accurate recognition of relevant cues for teacher action in the classroom. However, studies investigating how teachers obtain this information from the classroom are scarce. This study employed eye-tracking methodology to investigate teachers' visual perception and detection of classroom events. Results show that experienced teachers process visual information faster, and consistently check up on pupils more regularly. Also they are able to distribute their attention evenly across the classroom. Recommendations for future research and practical implications are discussed.     

Handicapping in squash

This article considers how a handicapping system should be devised for squash. It looks at the American scoring system, and whether it is possible to have a fair system of handicapping. We consider ‘fair’ from a perspective of expected number of rallies won and probability of winning.     

Historical perspective—weaving the lives of Florence Nightingale and Florence Nightingale David into the statistics classroom

This paper describes an activity to celebrate the lives of Florence Nightingale and Florence Nightingale David in statistics classrooms.     

Football matches: Decision making in betting

The aim of this paper is to approach the teaching of the Poisson distribution in a friendly and amusing way. It constitutes a common practice to adopt the main probability distributions in order to predict results of sport events and to estimate the win return of betting activities (Chalikias 2009). In particular, by using the Poisson distribution, we can calculate the probability of the final score in a football match, and then we can compare this probability with the values that various betting companies offer. Combining this information with the average of goals for both, it is possible to make a decision as to which betting company is more profitable for the betting players. The case study of the English Premier League is examined.     

Discovering patterns in interarrival data

It is suggested that students collect interarrival data for customers arriving at a queue. Two common features will often occur across these various datasets. Some data collection hints, some problems for students to pursue and a few pointers to the literature are given.     

Performance and perception in the flipped classroom

Changes in the conceptualisation of higher education have led to instructional methods that embrace technology as a teaching medium. These changes have led to the flipped classroom phenomenon - where content is delivered outside class, through media such as video and podcast, and engagement with the content, through problem-solving and/or group work, occurs in class. Studies investigating the impact of the flipped classroom have mainly looked at the student experience with little focus on whether exam outcomes are enhanced by flipping. An undergraduate Material Technology course at The University of the West Indies was taught in two formats over two successive years. The course was taught during the 2012/13 academic year in a ‘traditional’ format but, after reflecting on student feedback and personal pedagogy, the lecturer restructured the class and taught it in a flipped format during the 2013/14 academic year. This research examines whether the flipped format improved the learning experience in relation to exam performance and student perception. Data was gathered through analysis of course grades and student evaluation questionnaires. The lecturer’s reflective comments were also reviewed before and after the study. Analysis of the qualitative data shows that the flipped format led to a slight improvement in how students perceived the course and the lecturer’s reflection shows that they are keen to continue with the flipped format as it allowed more time for them to work with students at an individual level. While no significant change in relation to average cohort exam performance was found, fewer students in the flipped classroom achieved marks at the highest level. It is therefore recommended that practitioners who intend to flip their classroom pay as much attention to student performance as they do to student perception.     

Concept maps in introductory statistics

Concept maps are tools for organizing thoughts on the main ideas in a course. I present an example of a concept map that was created through the work of students in an introductory class and discuss major topics in statistics and relationships among them.     

Using context variety and students' discussions in recognizing statistical situations

We present a proposal for helping students to cope with statistical word problems related to the classification of different cases of confidence intervals. The proposal promotes an environment where students can explicitly discuss the reasons underlying their classification of cases.     

Elementary teachers' use and perception of rewards in the classroom

In the past four decades much research has gone into the use of rewards in education yet little attention has been given to the use of rewards from the perspective of teachers. This mixed method study examined how elementary school teachers define and use rewards in their classrooms and how various motivational constructs such as goal orientation, self-efficacy, and autonomy relate to teachers' use of rewards. Results revealed that all teachers in our sample use some form of rewards in their classrooms and the majority use some form of tangible rewards. Rewards were most frequently given for behaviour management, but there was a significant relationship between the use of rewards for behaviour and those given for academic achievement. Performance goal orientations for teaching were positively related to the use of tangible rewards and a higher degree of classroom control and negatively related to teacher self-efficacy. When asked to report on the appropriateness of using rewards in the classroom only one-third of the teachers reported that they should be used conditionally.     

Statistical investigation measuring intelligence and creativity

The use of statistical investigations as a teaching strategy have been shown to both motivate and engage students. The implementation of a statistical investigation to measure intelligence is described, covering core statistical principles and key elements of research design.     

Types and frequencies of feedback interventions in classroom interaction in secondary education

Contributing to the growing amount of literature on learning–enhancing feedback, this article attempts to distinguish between progress feedback and discrepancy feedback. Building on relevant literature drawn from psychology, we propose the use of a ratio of 3:1, positive:negative feedback. We analyzed contiguous 10 min blocks of classroom interactions from 78 teachers. Findings indicate that teachers seldom provide the types of feedback interventions identified as effective in enhancing learning in the course of typical classroom interactions. We examine potential explanations for this, discuss the consequences of this finding on teacher education and professional development, and offer several opportunities for future research.     

Exploring students' intuitive ideas of randomness using an iPod shuffle activity

This article presents an activity that engages students in considering characteristics of a random sequence, in this case, a randomly generated playlist of songs using the iPod shuffle feature. Students examine simulated sequences of randomly generated songs from a small music library in order to identify characteristics that are used to develop rules that they then apply to judge whether three suspicious lists are likely to be nonrandom.     

CAI课室的教学方法与实践

本文介绍了利用CAI课室的多媒体功能进行教学的新方法。该方法对传统的计算机基础课教学进行了改进,并在教学实践中证明是行之有效的。     

大学课堂教学中讨论式教学的组织

讨论式教学法对于培养学生形成批判性思维,增进协作意识,提高学生的口头表达能力和自主学习能力具有重要作用。本文着重探讨了讨论教学组织过程中讨论题目选择、讨论方式选择、讨论技巧和总结评价中应注重的问题。     

负二项分布的两个不同定义

给出了负二项分布的两个不同定义,给出了两类负二项随机变量的期望、方差与矩母函数。从直观上对这两类负二项随机变量做了描述。     

Slow thinking and deep learning: Tversky and Kahneman's taxi cabs

This article is based on classroom application of a problem story constructed by Amos Tversky in the 1970s. His intention was to evaluate human beings' intuitions about statistical inference. The problem was revisited by his colleague, the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman. The aim of this article is to show how popular science textbooks can serve as a source for rich classroom activity, with a little care in the implementation by teachers. Kahneman describes the problem as ‘standard’ and answers using a fixed point number. I describe how I have encouraged my students to challenge the certainty of this assertion by identifying ambiguities that are left unexplained in the story. This way, I claim to stimulate individuals to indeed move towards Thinking, Fast and Slow, the title of Kahneman's book.