PME Stochastics Teaching and Learning Working Group
Letter No 10 - January 1998
Dear Friends,
This Newsletter contains 10 items.
1. Our New Web Page
2. List of Members on the Web
3. Stochastics Papers from 1997
4. Working Group at PME 21, Stellenbosch, near Cape Town
5. Research Forum at PME 21, Stellenbosch
6. Present Planning for the Proposed Book
7. ICOTS Conference 1998 (Singapore)
8. Miscellaneous Items of Interest
9. Recent Publications of Interest
10. Next Newsletter
1. Our New Web Page
Thanks to Juan Godino we now have a Web Page. You can find it at
http://www.ugr.es/~batanero/pmegroup>.At the moment it contains a brief statement about the
group, and Newsletter No 9, but it will slowly grow. It also has links to some useful stochastics
learning sites.
2. List of Members on the Web.
We hope to include a list of the members of this Group on the Web Site, but we will only list
those members who ask to be included. The list will include name, institution, e-mail address,
and personal web page URL if you have them. If you would like your name on the list please
write to Juan at <jgodino@goliat.ugr.es> and provide a brief summary of your research interests
(about 50 - 60 words). If you look at the site you will see some examples of the sort of summary
which is appropriate. We encourage our members to make themselves known to others.
3. Research Papers on Stochastics Education from 1997
The collection of papers made by Joan Garfield and John Truran in order to make these papers
more widely accessible has now been prepared. It provides a useful overview of much of the
work being done in this field at this time, and would be a useful starting point for new
researchers as well as for more experienced researchers who like to keep up with what is going
on but cannot attend all the conferences or purchase all the proceedings. The collection contains
most of the stochastics research papers from the 1997 meetings of the following conferences:
American Educational Research Association (AERA) - 2 papers
Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME) - 7 papers
Mathematics Educational Research group of Australasia (MERGA) - 12 papers
Psychology of Mathematics Education - North America (PME-NA) - 2 papers
The booklet has more than 250 pages, is spiral bound and hard plastic covered. So it is suitable
for being ordered for libraries. One paper is in Spanish, the remainder are in English. It is being
sold at cost. The price is USD12 within the USA and Canada and USD20 elsewhere, including
printing and air mail postage. It are obtainable by sending a cheque/money order (not credit card
number) to
Dr Joan Garfield
Department of Educational Psychology
University of Minnesota
332 Burton Hall
178 Pilsbury Drive SE
Minneapolis MN55455
USA
4.Working Group at PME 22, 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. If you
would like to make a brief presentation (10 - 15 minutes), please let John know and he will
provide space in the timetable. It would help if you could bring 2 - 3 overheads to illustrate you
work, and possibly a brief handout, for about 25 people. If English is not your first language,
we will do our best to provide translation facilities.
b. Studying the possibility of developing a book on statistical education, which presents the state
of arts of research and pedagogical implications. More about this below.
c. Part of one session will 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.
5. Research Forum at PME 22, Stellenbosch
There are also plans for a Research Forum at PME 98 entitled "Learning and Teaching Data
Handling", co-ordinated by Paul Laridon. This is expected to consist of three sessions. In the
first two sessions a group of researchers will summarise their current research project. This will
be commented on by some reactors and then be placed open to general discussion. The third
session will be totally devoted to general discussion. Details of the speakers have not yet been
released, but this should provide a real opportunity for us to think through some of the big ideas
with which we are concerned.
6. Present Planning for the Proposed Book.
Since the last newsletter we have had various discussions between ourselves about the structure
of the book. We are still not yet happy that we have something which is clear enough to put into
the public arena. This is a pity, but we do not want this activity to fail half-way through. A
reasonably clear draft will be available for discussion before the
mid-year conferences.
7. ICOTS Conference 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 these will
provide good opportunities for debate. I have now read the timetable in detail and am pleased to
see that there is a lot of material of interest to stochastics researchers, and also the opportunity to
mix with people of quite different interests. 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".
8. Miscellaneous Items of Interest
(a) In 1999 PME will be held in Israel in mid-July. In 2000, ICME will be held near Tokyo from
31 Jul to 7 Aug. AZ PME Conference will be held in Hiroshima, to finish two days before ICME
starts Plans are being developed for a Round Table on Statistics Education after ICME, probably
also in Japan.
(b) There has been some expression of interest by some of the South Africans to hold the next
ICOTS in South Africa in 2002.
(c) "Research on the Role of Technology in Teaching and Learning Statistics. Proceedings of the
1996 IASE Round Conference." Edited by Joan Garfield. 21 papers in all. Price USD 25,
including postage, from International Statistical Institute, <isi@cs.vu.nl>
(b) "Computational Statistics and Statistics Education. Proceedings of the Tartu Conference".
Edited by E.M. Tiit. Contents - statistical software, purpose of statistical education,
computational problems in multi-variate applied statistics. Price USD10 from <etiit@ut.ee>
10. Next Newsletter
This is planned for the middle of March. Please send material for inclusion by 10 Mar 98.
John Truran <jtruran@arts.adelaide.edu.au>
Kath Truran <Kath.Truran@unisa.edu.au>
Carmen Batanero <batanero@goliat.ugr.es>