Basic Statistical Concepts Research Articles

Developing a Mobile Application to Improve the Levels of Statistical Literacy among Graduate Students

In today’s world, educated individuals are expected to understand basic statistical concepts and interpret statistical messages. For this reason, despite the undeniable importance of statistical literacy in the educational process, studies on undergraduate and postgraduate students in practice reveal that students have difficulties in determining the data structure, choosing the appropriate test for the purpose, and interpreting the findings correctly. Similar studies indicate that steps should be taken in many ways to overcome such difficulties. When the respective literature is viewed, it is understood that the use of software packages in teaching has many disadvantages such as being complex, being expensive and not being compatible with mobile devices, therefore, tech-supported teaching materials suitable for the level of students, in other words, instructional software is needed. Hence, it was aimed in this study to design a mobile teaching software for the development of advanced statistical literacy skills, which are often needed in the scientific research process. For this purpose, the first type of development method, which is one of the quantitative research methods, was preferred in the research. At the end of the research process, a free mobile teaching software program was developed that can be used in the teaching of statistical concepts at the postgraduate level and can perform statistical analysis. The alternatives offered by the application developed as a result of the research in response to the needs in the literature were examined. Additionally, the application was published via Google Play Store and was made available for users for a period of one year to receive evaluations, and at the end of this period, it was downloaded by users from dozens of various countries. It has been observed that the application, which has been downloaded approximately 40 thousand times in the last six months and reached 16 thousand users, received 84.6% positive scores (4.23). It is estimated that the application, which was developed as a result of the process, will contribute to the literature in terms of statistical literacy.

Your online textbook is ready: a shareable, interactive online textbook in response to COVID-19 lockdowns

This article discusses the development of an interactive online textbook for undergraduate teaching, in response to moving teaching online due to COVID-19. The development took place initially for a university with less than 5% of students studying online in 2019. The online textbook was incorporated into a large, diverse, multidisciplinary and predominantly first-year undergraduate research design and statistics course. Digital tools were embedded into the textbook to facilitate student engagement in lieu of face-to-face contact, including online crosswords for low-level statistical literacy, drop-and-drag activities, screencasts, exercises, animations, and videos. The textbook was prepared in markdown format. This approach allows for instant updating of material and provides focussed URLs that educators can use to point students directly to specific learning outcomes. Despite the textbook being developed in response to restricted teaching conditions, it has provided a cost-effective resource, targeted at teaching research design and basic statistics concepts, interpretation, and communication. Having returned to face-to-face teaching, the text is now fully integrated into the course. Importantly, the online textbook is freely available for other educators to use, either in its existing form, or by forking (on Github) the textbook sources to create a bespoke online textbook for other courses.

Implementation of Problem-Based Learning in Basic Statistical Concepts using Web-Based Apps

The aim of this article is to describe students' cognitive abilities and responses to problem-based learning in the basic statistical concepts when web-based apps is used. Web-based apps were utilized via the Mentimeter application and Google Forms. The application is intended to familiarize students’ with the process of data collection, data presentation, and problems solving. The students’ worksheet and learning response questionnaires were used in data colllection. The data were then described quantitatively. The results revealed that by ultilizing Mentimeter and Google Forms in problem-based learning will enhance students’ understanding and skills in the basic statistical concepts. Additionally, students had a positive attitude toward learning statistics. Student’ tend to be more enthusiastic about their studies.

Implementasi statistika sebagai alat analisis dalam pengambilan keputusan di bidang pendidikan

Statistics is a part of mathematics lessons in senior high school XII classes as well as mathematics specialization class XII. A comprehensive understanding of the basic concepts of statistics is needed to convey the material in class. The results of the discussion with the Mathematics MGMP of Kediri City, a workshop is needed to deepen the understanding of mathematics teachers, especially in the material of normal distribution and binomial distribution. In addition, Material about item analysis and standard setting is need to be introduced. Both materials can be used in evaluating learning. The workshop was held in two days. The first workshop held on 4 November 2020. Material for this day was normal distribution. At the end of the activity on this date, participants were given practice questions that should to be uploaded on google classroom. Second workshop held on 17 November 2020. Participatn are given material about binomial distribution, item analysis, and standard setting. This workshop has increased the level of understanding of participants on the material of binomial distribution and normal distribution. The increase in understanding is measured by the evaluation of the answers to the practice questions collected by the participants and the evaluation of the resource persons during the workshop activity. The next workshop can be conducted with the theme of statistical inferential analysis in educational research. The statistical analysis is very helpful for educators to analyze research data in education.

MultipleTesting.com: A tool for life science researchers for multiple hypothesis testing correction.

Scientists from nearly all disciplines face the problem of simultaneously evaluating many hypotheses. Conducting multiple comparisons increases the likelihood that a non-negligible proportion of associations will be false positives, clouding real discoveries. Drawing valid conclusions require taking into account the number of performed statistical tests and adjusting the statistical confidence measures. Several strategies exist to overcome the problem of multiple hypothesis testing. We aim to summarize critical statistical concepts and widely used correction approaches while also draw attention to frequently misinterpreted notions of statistical inference. We provide a step-by-step description of each multiple-testing correction method with clear examples and present an easy-to-follow guide for selecting the most suitable correction technique. To facilitate multiple-testing corrections, we developed a fully automated solution not requiring programming skills or the use of a command line. Our registration free online tool is available at www.multipletesting.com and compiles the five most frequently used adjustment tools, including the Bonferroni, the Holm (step-down), the Hochberg (step-up) corrections, allows to calculate False Discovery Rates (FDR) and q-values. The current summary provides a much needed practical synthesis of basic statistical concepts regarding multiple hypothesis testing in a comprehensible language with well-illustrated examples. The web tool will fill the gap for life science researchers by providing a user-friendly substitute for command-line alternatives.

Evaluating Statistical Numeracy of Women Who Follow Breast Cancer Screening

Objective: To assess statistical numeracy with a new specialized questionnaire in women who follow breast cancer screening programs. Methods: A cross-sectional study of women who follow breast cancer screening in the University Hospital of Ioannina, Greece. We have created a new tool to evaluate women statistical numeracy by using 11 basic concepts, which compose the statistical numeracy spectrum and are related with breast cancer screening programs. Content validity and reliability tests have been performed. Our sample consisted of 202 women, who took part in the study in the form of an interview. Results: A lack in statistical numeracy was observed, as the percentages of correct answers for the majority of the 11 concepts ranged from 6.9% to 53%. Percentages appear to be the concept that is more easily understood with correct answers equal to 53%. Visual presentation of medical information showed a significant improvement in women understanding, as 89.4% of them gave a correct answer. Conclusions: Women who follow breast cancer screening programs face great difficulty in understanding basic medical statistical numeracy concepts. These concepts have great importance in women’s informed decision making. The vast majority of women may make wrong decisions regarding screening programs due to the misconception of medical information. Visual presentation of the medical information could improve the misconception problem. Keywords: Breast cancer screening, Statistical numeracy, Women, Women decision making, Women misconception, Informed decision making

Assessing for Practice-Based Learning and Improvement: Distinguishing Evidence-Based Practice From Reflective Learning.

Assessing for Practice-Based Learning and Improvement: Distinguishing Evidence-Based Practice From Reflective Learning.

O equilíbrio de Hardy-Weinberg no sistema sanguíneo ABO: um estudo de caso em Engenheiro Coelho – SP

The genetics of human populations is the branch of Genetics that studies the dynamics of genes in natural populations, aiming at the elucidation of mechanisms that alter their genetic composition. Among the fundamentals of this science is the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium, which determines that gene frequencies remain unchanged and genotypic proportions reach a stable balance, obtaining the same constant relation with each other over time. To demonstrate this principle, it is necessary to admit that the studied population is not subject to evolutionary factors or to those that alter genotypic frequencies, increasing the homozygosity. More specifically, it is necessary to assume that the population obeys the following premises: random mating, infinite population, non-overlapping generations, in addition to the absence of mutation, selection and migration. More than recalling basic concepts of Genetics and Statistics, this article aims to describe the Bernstein Method for verifying the gene equilibrium for blood types. The research is concluded with a case study in the city of Engenheiro Coelho - SP, where the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium for blood types in the population is verified.

Fundamental Statistical Concepts in Clinical Trials and Diagnostic Testing.

This article explores basic statistical concepts of clinical trial design and diagnostic testing, or how one starts with a question, formulates it into a hypothesis on which a clinical trial is then built, and integrates it with statistics and probability, such as determining the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis when it is actually true (type I error) and the probability of failing to reject the null hypothesis when it is false (type II error). There are a variety of tests for different types of data, and the appropriate test must be chosen for which the sample data meet the assumptions. Correcting type I error in the presence of multiple testing is needed to control the error's inflation. Within diagnostic testing, identifying false-positive and false-negative results is critical to understanding the performance of a test. These are used to determine the sensitivity and specificity of a test along with the test's negative predictive value and positive predictive value. These quantities, specifically sensitivity and specificity, are used to determine the accuracy of a diagnostic test using receiver-operating-characteristic curves. These concepts are briefly introduced to provide a basic understanding of clinical trial design and analysis, with references to allow the reader to explore various concepts at a more detailed level if desired.

Hierarchical Data Analysis for the Characterization of Polymeric Materials: Linking Measurements and Statistical Methodology

As future chemical engineers, it is important that students be able to identify and quantify sources of error. A statistical analysis technique that is often overlooked is hierarchical design methodology, which allows for the separation of overall variance into several related components. While hierarchical methodology is relevant to many fields, we have demonstrated that it can be taught through the synthesis and characterization of polymeric materials. Basic statistical concepts are described, along with relevant examples.

Considerações sobre planejamento experimental e adequabilidade do uso de testes estatísticos em Ciências Agrárias

In scientific research, planning and carrying out experiments are common practices in Agricultural Sciences. Although the experimental methods are widely known, it is clear that their assumptions are often not verified, reflecting the low precision and quality of the results. This research aims to: 1) discuss basic concepts of experimental statistics; 2) present the main statistical models and methods used in Agricultural Sciences; 3) evaluate the suitability of using statistical tests in scientific articles. In planning, the choice of design should consider environmental heterogeneity. Hypotheses are tested by the F test, and Anova's assumptions must be met. Data transformation is an efficient tool that is often necessary but little explored. When testing qualitative treatments, a comparison/grouping of means test is used, with the Scott-Knott test being the most robust. When quantitative, linear regression. When successive evaluations are carried out in the same experimental unit, repeated measures analysis is used. The coefficient of variation indicates experimental precision and varies with treatments, variables and environment. The repeatability coefficient estimates the number of evaluations and experiments to be carried out, with a high degree of precision. As for suitability, 32 articles were analyzed and all presented insufficient information on the methodology, compromising the reproducibility of the research. Therefore, experimental planning allows conducting research with savings in time, costs and labor, without compromising the accuracy of the conclusions

Using virtual labs to teach design and analysis of experiments

A common problem when teaching statistics is that students learn the basic concepts of inferential statistics, but at the moment of applying them to real problems, they fail to apply them effectively. In this work, a group of virtual experiments with real data oriented to different areas of engineering was developed. The models allow the students to improve their level of proficiency in the application of the concepts of the p value and the contribution percentage of the variable in the observed results using virtual experimentation. The initial results show that students find statistics more useful when the teaching included exercises with virtual models.

The Raising Factor, That Great Unknown. A Guided Activity for Undergraduate Students

In the first years of their economics degree programs, students will face many problems successfully dealing with a range of subjects with quantitative content. Specifically, in the field of statistics, difficulties to reach some basic academic achievements have been observed. Hence, a continuing challenge for statistics teachers is how to make this subject more appealing for students through the design and implementation of new teaching methodologies. The latter tend to follow two main approaches. On the one hand, it is useful for the learning process to propose practical activities that can connect theoretical concepts with real applications in the economic context. On the other hand, we should design multidisciplinary activities that link concepts from different subjects. With this goal in mind, in this article we propose a complete activity for first year students in business administration and economics degree programs, aimed to reinforce some basic statistical and economic concepts, while other basic transversal skills are also practiced, all within the subject of statistics.

The Better Book Approach for Education Research and Development

Background/Context Despite advances in the learning sciences, a persistent gap remains between research and practice. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study In this project, we develop and try out a new approach to education research and development in which researchers, designers/ developers, and instructors collaborate to continuously improve an online interactive textbook. Intervention/Program/Practice Using a “learn by doing” strategy, we first created a highly instrumented online textbook for introductory statistics. The design of our online book is based on the practicing-connections hypothesis: Instead of learning individual “bits” of information and then hoping that learners end up with transferable knowledge, we designed a curriculum to engage students in repeated practice of the connections—between core concepts, representations, and the world—that make knowledge transferable. The textbook includes more than 1,200 formative assessments, generating large amounts of data relevant to both the process and outcomes of college students learning of statistics. Using the affordances of technology, we then began working to apply routines and practices from open software development (Git) and improvement science (Toyota Kata) to build an improvement community focused on continuous improvement of the online book. We also are building a technology platform (CourseKata) to publish the book from markdown files stored on GitHub; distribute the book through widely used learning management systems; collect detailed student data and deliver it back to instructors and, in a de-identified form, researchers; and manage experiments that randomly assign different versions of content to different students within a single class, and then assess the effects on students’ learning. Research Design Our research design is a mixed-methods design research and improvement study. We gauge success through measures of process, outcome, and transfer. Conclusions/Recommendations We are at only the beginning of what we see as a lengthy project. We are encouraged, however, by our progress, and invite others—including researchers, designers/developers, and instructors—to join us in our improvement community focused on improving the transferable learning of basic statistical concepts at scale.

Assessing Nigerian Secondary School Students’ Misconceptions in Five Basic Statistical Concepts

The study was designed to assess and document students’ right conceptions and misconceptions of five basic concepts in statistics. It employed the survey design to randomly select 4332 participants from 114 Senior Secondary Schools across Edo State, Nigeria. The instrument was a two-tier multiple choice diagnostic test, which was validated and with a K-R Formular 20 reliability coefficient of 0.85. Three research questions were raised to guide the study. Data were analyzed using frequency counts and percentages. Results showed low students’ right conceptions of basic statistical concepts and with majority of students having some nine misconceptions. It was recommended that teachers and textbook writers should use conceptual change instructional strategies to identify and change students’ misconceptions in statistics in order to improve students’ understanding and achievement in mathematics.

Research at Work: Sampling, Central Tendency, and Causation

A basic understanding of statistics is an important piece of social work practice, informing the ability of social workers to interpret and evaluate existing research and to conduct evaluations of programs in their agencies. This article gives an overview of basic statistical concepts of variables, central tendency, and correlation versus causation to give social workers a preliminary foundation to critically evaluate and utilize basic research. The basic statistics in the study “Relationship Between the Five Facets of Mindfulness on Mood and Substance Use Relapse” by Temme and Wang (2018) are unpacked as a way to bring to life the statistical concepts discussed throughout the article.

Statistical approaches for spatial sample survey: Persistent misconceptions and new developments

AbstractSeveral misconceptions about the design‐based approach for sampling and statistical inference, based on classical sampling theory, seem to be quite persistent. These misconceptions are the result of confusion about basic statistical concepts such as independence, expectation, and bias and variance of estimators or predictors. These concepts have a different meaning in the design‐based and model‐based approach, because they consider different sources of randomness. Also, a population mean is still often confused with a model mean, and a population variance with a model‐variance, leading to invalid formulas for the variance of an estimator of the population mean. In this paper the fundamental differences between these two approaches are illustrated with simulations, so that hopefully more pedometricians get a better understanding of this subject. An overview is presented of how in the design‐based approach we can make use of knowledge of the spatial structure of the study variable. In the second part, new developments in both the design‐based and model‐based approach are described that try to combine the strengths of the two approaches.Highlights Ignorance of fundamental differences between design‐based and model‐based approaches still cause errors in statistical inference. Basic statistical concepts such as independence, variance and bias of an estimator have a different meaning in the two approaches. In estimating and testing it is important to distinguish population parameters from model parameters. Hybrid methods that combine the strengths of the two approaches are reviewed.

The Role of ICT-Based Metacognition and Process of Complex Problem Solving Against the Capability of Student Statistics in the Industrial Age 4.0

The ability of statistics is the knowledge base of statistical reasoning and statistical thinking. Statistical capabilities in this study it: 1) reasoning for data, 2) Reasoning for basic statistical concepts and terms used in statistics, 3) Reasoning for data collection and processing in descriptive statistics, 4) Basic abilities in translate data, and 5) basic abilities in communicating data and research results. The ability of Statistics can be improved by increasing the role of student metacognition. In the industrial age 4.0, one way to optimize student metacognition skills is to get used to solving complex problems with ICT-based and complex problem-solving processes. The method used is a qualitative method. In Intervention applying learning statistics by developing statistics modules. This research with random samples. .One control and one experimental class. Based on the results of trials I and II that the ability of metacognition has a significant effect on the ability of student statistics where F count > F table , which means the role of metacognition is very significant on the ability of student statistics. Students also show a good or positive response. Keywords: Metacognition , ICT and Process Of Complex Problem-Solving, Capability of Student Statistics, Industrial Age 4.0 DOI: 10.7176/JEP/11-18-05 Publication date: June 30th 2020

Teaching Introductory Statistical Classes in Medical Schools Using RStudio and R Statistical Language: Evaluating Technology Acceptance and Change in Attitude Toward Statistics

Biostatistics is a critical skill to physicians in an evidence-based medicine era, but teaching basic statistical concepts is challenging. Students often experience anxiety caused by the complexity of statistics and might express negative attitudes toward the subject. We aimed to analyze the effect of an introductory biostatistics course using RStudio on attitude toward statistics and assess its acceptance among medical students. Forty-three 1st-year medical students were included. Pre- and post-course attitudes toward statistics were assessed using the Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics (SATS-28) scale and technology acceptance was assessed by a Technology Acceptance Model scale at the end of the course. There was a statistically discernible (significant) gain in the scores of three of the four SATS dimensions: affection (p = 0.006, Cohen’s d = 0.442), cognitive competence (p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.605), and difficulty (p = 0.008, Cohen’s d = 0.421). Acceptance of RStudio was moderate to high in 93% of the participants, without statistical differences between genders. RStudio can be useful in the teaching of statistics to medical students, being well accepted and positively associated with students’ attitude toward statistics. Supplementary files for this article are available online.

A Matemática além dos muros da escola: construindo tabelas e gráficos sobre os fatores de saúde

Este texto trata-se do relato de uma experiência realizada na disciplina de Matemática com as turmas do terceiro ano do Ensino Médio de uma escola do sudoeste baiano. O objetivo do trabalho foi desenvolver estratégias e ações que possibilitem aos educandos a construção, a análise e a interpretação de gráficos e tabelas em questões transversais mediante pesquisa de campo em suas comunidades. A proposta educativa contou com a participação de 75 educandos que foram a campos e coletaram dados de 2727 sujeitos. Foram abordados o tema transversal saúde e os conceitos básicos de Estatística. A experiência permitiu aplicar orientações para atividades práticas que revelaram avanços e limites para realização das atividades propostas.