PME Stochastics Teaching and Learning Working Group

Letter No 9 - November 1997

Dear Friends,

This Newsletter contains seven items.

1. Miscellaneous Items of Interest

2. Working Group at PME 21, Stellenbosch, near Cape Town

3. Report on Discussion at Lahti about the proposed Book

4. Present planning for the proposed Book.

5 ICOTS Singapore 1998

6. Next Newsletter

1. Miscellaneous Items of Interest

1 (a) Anne Hawkins' report of our recent PME meeting in Lahti may be found

in the latest edition of "Teaching Statistics". A report on the MERGA

meeting in New Zealand in July will probably be published in the following

edition.

1 (b) Some of you will know that Joan Garfield is currently collating

stochastics papers from a number of conferences across the world this year

for sale at cost. She hopes to have the book ready before Christmas. We are

very grateful to Joan for being willing to do this. I know that her last

collection of papers is still be asked for all around the world. More

details of the new one in the next newsletter.

1 (c) Carmen sent out a special note to this list to advice them of the

special Research Forum at PME 98 entitled "Learning and Teaching Data

Handling", co-ordinated by Paul Laridon. We were initially unaware that

this was part of the Conference planning and applications to be part of

this closed on 15 November. Because of several administrative problems with

distributing the First Announcement there was very little time for anyone

to get their material prepared, but we hope that a number of useful

proposals have been put up.

1 (d) The International Statistical Institute met in Istanbul in late

August. The proceedings have been published by the ISI as a special issue

of the Bulletin of the International Statistical Institute. Some special

sessions and contributed papers at this very large meeting concerned with

statistical education were presented. Reports of these sessions and the

IASE General Assembly have being included at the November 1997 issue of

IASE Review and in the ISI Newsletter v. 21(3).

1 (e) In 1999 PME will be held in Israel in mid-July. In 2000, it will be

held in Hiroshima from 30 Jul to 6 Aug, ending just two days before ICME

starts in Tokyo. Plans are being developed for a Round Table on Statistics

Education after ICME, but the location has not yet been decided.

1 (f) Carmen & John have put forward a proposition for including some

aspects of Advanced Stochastic Thinking in the planned PME book on Advanced

Mathematical Thinking. Decisions have not yet been made. If our proposal is

accepted in full, we shall need to ask some others for help.

2. Working Group at PME 21, Stellenbosch, near Cape Town

This conference will be held from 12-17 July 97 at a small university town

in the wine growing region of Southern South Africa about 50 km from Cape

Town. PME will be held near Cape Town in middle July with a theme of

Diversity and Change in Mathematics Education. It is our plan to continue

the Working Group which we co-ordinate, and we are working especially to

involve people from African countries who have not previously been to PME.

We will have three major items on our agenda.

a. Providing opportunities for members to talk about their work in an

informal way.

b. Studying the possibility of developing a book on statistical

education, which presents the state of arts of research and pedagogical

implications.

The text of the document which will appear in the PME Proceedings is as follows

Working Group on the Teaching and Learning of Stochastics

This Working Group exists as a focus for members interested in the

psychology of the teaching and learning of probability, statistics and

combinatorics. It maintains an informal network between Conferences by

means of an electronically distributed newsletter. It particularly seeks to

bring together interested people from all language groups, and does its

best to provide translation facilities as appropriate.

At PME in 1997 a proposal was raised for developing a book

which presents a survey of the main research done in statistical education

within both Education and Psychology. The working group co-ordinators were

asked to prepare a first draft of the possible orientation and structure of

the book. Planning has proceeded since then and by the time of the 1998

meeting we hope that a first framework will be ready for discussion. A

meeting of the PME Stochastics Group will also be held along the

International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS 5), Singapore, June,

1998.

Part of our Working Group meetings will also be devoted to ensuring that

all of us have an opportunity to talk informally about our work. People who

wish to be involved in this Working Group are invited, if they wish, to

make a 10-15 minute presentation on their interests which might be

supported by two or three overhead transparencies and perhaps some handouts

of work which you think will be of interest for others.

Part of one session will also be devoted to the making of plans for

developing electronic ways of developing data bases which will provide

researchers into stochastics understanding to have efficient access to

authoritative previous work.

3. Report on Discussion at Lahti

There had been substantial airing of ideas on the e-mail before we met

together. These were talked through at length and we reached agreement in

the following ways.

a. It is important that whatever we do is done in a form which will

enable contributors to gain university credit.

b. At this point the proposal to produce an annotated bibliography is

probably not feasible at least in the short term. At the moment a couple of

us are thinking about alternative ways of approaching this issue, and we

will present our ideas when they are more clearly formed.

c. A proposal was raised in Lahti to produce a book, which contains a

survey of the main research done on Stochastics both in Education and

Psychology. This book might be prepared in the more traditional form of

calling for offers of chapters, and looking for involving key researchers

in the area, as well as to co-ordinate the chapters into a meaningful form.

The would be directed at researchers and statistical educators. It could be

also useful to teachers of statistics at all levels, as we would attempt to

address pedagogic issues from a research background. This book has to be

attractive enough that people will want to read it.

d. The co-ordinators were asked to prepare a draft outline of what the

book might look like, together with a general set of guidelines for

authors, and to circulate this within the group for initial response. This

will be done in time for being presented and discussed in Stellenbosch and

Singapore.

e. Once agreement has been reached on these points, then we might seek

a publisher. Several suggestions were put forward, and it was felt that

there was sufficient hope of finding support that this approach was worth

pursuing.

f. The final working session was spent mainly defining key words and

concepts which needed to be addressed. These will be incorporated into the

suggestions for a basic book structure.

4. Present Planning for the Proposed Book.

We are starting to work on a proposal for the basic structure of the book.

At this stage we are not happy that we have an adequately well balanced

plan and we believe that we need more time to get it right.

We hope to have a first draft ready for informal discussion before the

conferences.

5. ICOTS 1998 (Singapore)

There will be an International Conference on the Teaching of Statistics

(ICOTS6) in late June in Singapore. Many people with a special interest in

stochastics education will be there. At the moment there are more than 200

non-Singapore enrolments.

In addition to a number of papers concerned with the teaching and learning

of stochastics at all levels, there will be many sessions concerned with a

wide variety of industrial aspects of statistics. And a session on the

history of statistics. There will be a some round table discussions as

well, and we hope that theswill provide good opportunities for debate.

Some people who might want to contribute to the PME book may be going to

Singapore, but not to Stellenbosch. So we are arranging to have a room

available at Singapore where informal discussions about the book project

can be done during "spare time".

6. Next Newsletter

This is planned for the middle of January. Please send material for

inclusion by 10 Jan 98.

John Truran <jtruran@arts.adelaide.edu.au>

Kath Truran <Kath.Truran@unisa.edu.au>

Carmen Batanero <batanero@goliat.ugr.es>