Quick Index
 |
Rex
Boggs Glenmore SHS PO Box 5822 R'ton Mail Centre Rockhampton, Q Australia 4702 |
Read Me First!
What's here, and how to find it. Also copyright
information.
Introduction
to Exploring Data
Statisticians do it! And so should you.
Looking
for Patterns
The most valuable feature of a dataset may be that which
is unexpected. Looking at the data in a variety of ways
may reveal interesting and surprising patterns.
Stemplots
All you need to know about this useful graphical display.
Activities, worksheets and extension material are
available from this page.
Dotplots
Dotplots are often the neglected cousin in the family of
graphical displays of data. But they are easy to
construct and can tell us much about a dataset.
Histograms
Histograms are very useful, but care needs to be taken in
constructing and interpreting them. Remarkably, research
about histograms is still being conducted.
Measures
of Location
So you think the mean, median and mode are boring? Well,
maybe, but there are some interesting little side alleys
to this topic that are worth exploring.
Measures
of Spread
Visit here, and you will learn about some vary
useful statistics.
Boxplots
Visit this page and you may possibly learn more than you
ever wanted to know about boxplots.
Normal
Plots
Not included in Queensland syllabuses, a normal plot of a
dataset shows at a glance if a dataset is approximately
normally distributed. A very useful display to put in
your display cabinet.
Scatterplots
When working with bi-variate data, the absolutely first
thing a statistician does is construct a scatterplot. So
the absolutely first thing a student working with
bi-variate data should do is construct a scatterplot.
Assessment
Some nice assignments and test questions are available
here.
Datasets
Students should work with real data. So here is some,
available in tab-delimited, Excel 4.0 and NCSS 6.0 Jr
formats.
Resources
A smallish collection of the best resources available for
teaching and learning statistics. In my opinion.
Linear
Regression
Linear regression has the potential to
integrate the topics of Introduction to Function and
Applied Statistical Analysis in Maths B. This page
explains how it can be done.
Normal
Distribution
Discover the link between the 1.5*IQR Rule and the normal
distribution, and why you should use light bulbs to burn
those traditional statistics textbooks.
Probability
Probability is a wonderful subject to teach! There are so
many activities for teaching concepts, puzzles and
problems with non-intuitive answers and a variety of
contexts for the exercises. This page contains a small
collection.
Sampling
Contains a nice little activity - the JellyBlubbers -
which was modified from a problem in a leading textbook
which was modified from an activity in Activity Based
Statistics. And the original activity started as a bucket
of rocks on the desk of a statistics teacher. An activity
with impeccable lineage.
Confidence
Intervals
Are you 95% confident that you can correctly teach your
students the correct meaning of confidence intervals?
Hypothesis
Testing
Teaching students to understand hypothesis testing is a
difficult business indeed. This page contains some
activities that will give students some hands-on
experiences with the underlying concepts.
Curve
Fitting
Contains Anscombe's famous dataset, and a comprehensive
manual on using technology to fit functions to data.
Acknowledgements
The many people who have taught me about statistics.