MAKING COMPARISONS BETWEEN OBSERVED DATA AND EXPECTED OUTCOMES: STUDENTS’ INFORMAL HYPOTHESIS TESTING WITH PROBABILITY SIMULATION TOOLS

Hollylynne Stohl Lee

North Carolina State University

hollylynne@ncsu.edu

Robin L. Angotti

University of Washington Bothell

rrider@uwb.edu

James E. Tarr

University of Missouri

TarrJ@missouri.edu

ABSTRACT

We examined how middle school students reason about results from a computer-simulated die-tossing experiment, including various representations of data, to support or refute an assumption that the outcomes on a die are equiprobable. We used students’ actions with the software and their social interactions to infer their expectations and whether or not they believed their empirical data could be used to refute an assumption of equiprobable outcomes. Comparisons across students illuminate intricacies in their reasoning as they collect and analyze data from the die tosses. Overall, our research contributes to understanding how students can engage in informal hypothesis testing and use data from simulations to make inferences about a probability distribution.

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Statistics Education Research Journal, 9(1), 68-96, http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/serj

Ó International Association for Statistical Education (IASE/ISI), May, 2010

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Hollylynne Stohl Lee

Department of Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education

North Carolina State University

Campus Box 7801

502D Poe Hall

Raleigh, NC 27695