Students, Statistics, and the Learning Curve: An In-Depth Look at the Learning Process in Undergraduate Statistics
by
Alan Albright
University of Memphis

This research is an in-depth, multi-faceted look at the process that undergraduate students go through when learning statistics. The approaches were an article and book review, observations of classroom instruction, the tutoring of students, a qualitative interview of six top students, an assessment of seven years of academic records, and a 50 question empirical survey of 49 undergraduate students currently enrolled in statistics. The primary findings were that: a bimodal distribution was found between the students who learn the material and those that do not; a personality profile can be described to those that learn the material from those that do not; the questions designed to measure deep understanding correlate with grade in statistics; a system effect exists when learning the material; the students who are making the high marks are really understanding the material; statistics is logical and it is perceived as such by the students; overall grade point average is a better predictor for success in statistics than math scores; and a negative correlation was found between reading the textbook and success in statistics.

Date received: February 25, 2008

Copyright © 2008 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # cawu-19.