Cognitive Transfer Outcomes for a Simulation-Based Introductory Statistics Curriculum

Exploring Simulation-Based Inference in a High School Course

“…Given the ample evidence that university undergraduates have difficulty mastering concepts in traditional statistical inference (e.g., Castro Sotos et al, 2007;Chance et al, 2004), it is surprising that the curricula of statistics courses at the high school level typically include classical inferential methods (see, for example, curricula for AP Statistics (AP Central, 2022) and A-level Statistics (Cambridge International Assessment, 2022)). Alternative approaches to inference, based around simulation of sampling distributions, have been advocated in recent years and evidence of improved learning from such methods has accumulated (see, as examples, Beckman et al, 2017;Hildreth et al, 2018;Tintle et al, 2012). Because there are also resources available for facilitating simulation-based instruction such as StatKey (Lock et al, 2017) and the Introduction to Statistical Investigations applets (Tintle et al, 2015), there are strong arguments that an introduction to inference at school level should be based around simulations of sampling distributions rather than the use of theoretical results.…”