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Crossing the liminal space: students’ understanding of confidence intervals

conference contribution
posted on 2023-05-23, 14:21 authored by Robyn ReaburnRobyn Reaburn, Barbara HollandBarbara Holland, Greg OatesGreg Oates, Stojanovski, E
This paper describes responses first-year university students gave to a survey asking them about their understanding of Confidence Intervals, after their first introduction to the topic in a statistics course at two tertiary institutions in Australia. Their responses indicate that whereas the participants could explain that Confidence Intervals were used to estimate the value of a population mean, in general they were confused about the theory that enabled probabilities to be assigned to such intervals. Some participants were also confused about the terminology used in inferential statistics. The results of this study suggest that instructors should not underestimate how difficult students find this topic. We must be careful to include questions that require explanations of understanding, not just numerical answers that can be learnt by rote. We conclude that more research is needed into student understanding of confidence intervals, including the suggestion from this study that Confidence Intervals might be considered as a Threshold Concept in advancing students’ statistical thinking.

History

Publication title

Proceedings of the 12th Delta conference on the teaching and learning of undergraduate mathematics and statistics

Editors

J Pettigrew, L Rylands, D Shearman, A Yeung

Pagination

176

ISBN

978-1-74108-498-6

Department/School

Faculty of Education

Publisher

Western Sydney University, School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics on behalf of the International Delta Steering Committee

Place of publication

Australia

Event title

Twelfth Southern Hemisphere Delta Conference on the Teaching and Learning of Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics

Event Venue

Fremantle, Western Australia

Date of Event (Start Date)

2019-11-24

Date of Event (End Date)

2019-11-29

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

Learner and learning not elsewhere classified

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