This article describes how a spreadsheet-based tool can be used to allocate each student in a class a unique subset of a large set of data, as the basis for a statistical assignment.

A hands-on activity is described in which students attempt to measure something that they cannot see. In small groups, students estimate the number of marbles in sealed boxes. Next, students' estimates are compared with the actual numbers. Last, values from both the students' estimates and actual numbers are used to explain measurement theory and…

Standard distributions are ubiquitous but not unique. With suitable scaling, the graph of a standard distribution serves as the graph for every distribution in the family. The standard exponential can easily be taught in elementary statistics courses.

Evidence-based policy requires sophisticated modelling and reasoning about complex social data. The current UK statistics curricula do not equip tomorrow's citizens to understand such reasoning. We advocate radical curriculum reform, designed to require students to reason from complex data.

Many students have difficulty seeing the conceptual link between bivariate data displayed in a scatterplot and the statistical summary of the relationship, "r." This article shows how to teach (and compute) "r" such that each datum's direct and indirect influences are made apparent and used in a new formula for calculating Pearson's "r."

Students learning statistics want to know how our methods are used in the real world. In response, this article offers a discussion of a relevant and timely medical study reported in recent headlines. Careful consideration of the study raises some ideas to get students engaged with statistics.

This article expresses concern for the sloppy language that is often used by the media to describe numerical comparisons and suggests guidelines for how such comparisons should be described such that the meanings are unambiguous.

This article shows how R can be used to perform resampling with and without replacement.

Turkey cooking provides an opportunity to show off a real use of statistics.

This article sets out a vision for the general nature of the statistics curriculum in the medium to long term.

Several tasks used in research studies are presented with assessment rubrics and examples of the development of student understanding. The tasks focus on students' appreciation of variation in several contexts and illustrate the need to discuss variation in the classroom and to ask students specifically about it during assessment.

This article describes a classroom demonstration that may be used to encourage students' development and understanding of the idea of hypothesis testing.

Tables and charts are efficient tools for organizing numbers, but many people give little consideration to the order in which they present the data. This article illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of four criteria for organizing data--empirical, theoretical, alphabetical and a standardized reporting scheme.

A picture of a 95% confidence interval (CI) implicitly contains pictures of CIs of all other levels of confidence, and information about the "p"-value for testing a null hypothesis. This article discusses pictures, taken from interactive software, that suggest several ways to think about the level of confidence of a CI, "p"-values, and what…

This article describes how roulette can be used to teach basic concepts of probability. Various bets are used to illustrate the computation of expected value. A betting system shows variations in patterns that often appear in random events.