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ERIC Number: EJ1033562
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2014-May
Pages: 16
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1570-1824
EISSN: N/A
Exploiting Lexical Ambiguity to Help Students Understand the Meaning of "Random"
Kaplan, Jennifer J.; Rogness, Neal T.; Fisher, Diane G.
Statistics Education Research Journal, v13 n1 p9-24 May 2014
Words that are part of colloquial English but used differently in a technical domain may possess lexical ambiguity. The use of such words by instructors may inhibit student learning if incorrect connections are made by students between the technical and colloquial meanings. One fundamental word in statistics that has lexical ambiguity for students is "random." A suggestion in the literature to counteract the effects of lexical ambiguity and help students learn vocabulary is to exploit the lexical ambiguity of the words. This paper describes a teaching experiment designed to exploit the lexical ambiguities of random in the statistics classroom and provides preliminary results that indicate that such classroom interventions can be successful at helping students make sense of ambiguous words.
International Association for Statistics Education and the International Statistical Institute. PO Box 24070, 2490 AB The Hague, The Netherlands. Tel: +31-70-3375737; Fax: +31-70-3860025; e-mail: isi@cbs.nl; Web site: http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/serj
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A