Contents of 31-3
Having a Whale of a Time P66. Chris du Feu
A classroom practical exercise exploring the reliability of a basic capture-mark-recapture method of population estimation is described using great whale conservation as a starting point. Various teaching resources are made available.
Helping Students Develop Statistical Reasoning: Implementing a Statistical Reasoning Learning Environment P72. Joan Garfield¹ and Dani Ben-Zvi
This article describes a model for an interactive, introductory secondary- or tertiary-level statistics course that is designed to develop students’ statistical reasoning. This model is called a ‘Statistical Reasoning Learning Environment’ and is built on the constructivist theory of learning.
Why Don’t We Live Forever? P78. Ruma Falk
The older one gets, the more one’s life expectancy exceeds the population’s given expectancy (at birth). Yet longevity is finite. This apparent paradox is analysed probabilistically with reference to empirical demographic data.
Playing with Residuals P81. David L. Farnsworth
A simple way is given to create residual plots that are words or pictures. Three illustrative examples are presented.
What is Strong Correlation? P85. Marcin Kozak
Interpretation of correlation is often based on rules of thumb in which some boundary values are given to help decide whether correlation is non-important, weak, strong or very strong. This article shows that such rules of thumb may do more harm than good, and instead of supporting interpretation of correlation – which is their aim – they teach a schematic approach to statistics. Therefore they should be avoided in a statistics course.
The Binomial Distribution in Shooting P87. Miltiadis S. Chalikias
The binomial distribution is used to predict the winner of the 49th International Shooting Sport Federation World Championship in double trap shooting held in 2006 in Zagreb, Croatia. The outcome of the competition was definitely unexpected.
Improbable versus Unexpected Outcomes P90. Paul J. van Staden
In this short note, the difference between improbable and unexpected outcomes is demonstrated via an example that uses the hypergeometric distribution.