• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.309-316
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• 2006

This study examined the ambiguous using the terminology of statistics at mathematics textbook of highschool in Korea and proposed the correct using of sampling error and sampling distribution of sample mean with consistency. And this paper proposed that the concept of error have to teach in context of sampling action in school mathematics.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.17-32
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• 2011

This study investigated pre-service teachers' understanding of statistical sampling. The researchers categorized major topics related to sampling into representativeness of samples, sampling variability, and sampling distribution, and selected concepts connected to each topic. Findings on this study are as follows: Even though most of the pre-service teachers considered the random sampling bringing unbiased outcomes as a proper sampling method, only 64% of them recognized that sample is a quasi-proportional, small-scale version of population; Few pre-service teachers understood that more important is the size of sample, not the portion of sample to population, and half of them appreciated that the number of sampling has a powerful effect on drawing of reliable results than the size of sample; Few pre-service teachers understood that sampling distribute is irrelevant to the shape of population and has a symmetrical bell-shape.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.239-257
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• 2020

This study analyzes the degree of freedom with three aspects: as academic knowledge, in the curriculum focused on textbooks, and students' understanding of the degree of freedom. The results provide five critical points. First, we need discussions on whether to include the degree of freedom in the curriculum. Second, we need to reconsider the current way textbooks are described. Third, there should be a didactical analysis to advance students' understanding of the concept of the degree of freedom. Fourth, there are limitations in learning the concept of the degree of freedom in the current textbook learning environment. Fifth, a didactical check of sampling distribution such as sample mean, sample variance, and sample standard deviation is required. The implications were drawn that the emphasis on statistical reasoning education in the curriculum and careful consideration of introducing the t-distribution curriculum was required.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.21-47
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• 2023

This study examines the activity system of teaching and learning about informal statistical inference using sampling simulation, based on cultural-historical activity theory. The research explores what contradictions arise in the activity system and how the system changes as a result of these contradictions. The participants were 20 elementary school students in the 5th to 6th grades who received classes on informal statistical inference using sampling simulations. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. The findings show that a contradiction emerged between the rule and the object, as well as between the mediating artifact and the object. It was confirmed that visualization of empirical sampling distribution was introduced as a new artifact while resolving these contradictions. In addition, contradictions arose between the subject and the rule and between the rule and the mediating artifact. It was confirmed that an algorithm to calculate the mean of the sample means was introduced as a new rule while resolving these contradictions.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.327-344
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• 2011

This study is the first step for us toward improving high school students' capability of statistical inferences, such as obtaining and interpreting the confidence interval on the population mean that is currently learned in high school. We suggest 5 underlying concepts of 'discretion of contingency and inevitability', 'discretion of induction and deduction', 'likelihood principle', 'variability of a statistic' and 'statistical model', those are necessary to appreciate statistical inferences as a reliable arguing tools in spite of its occasional erroneous conclusions. We assume those 5 concepts above are to be gradually developing in their school periods and Korean mathematics textbooks of grades 1-12 were analyzed. Followings were found. For the right choice of solving methodology of the given problem, no elementary textbook but a few high school textbooks describe its difference between the contingent circumstance and the inevitable one. Formal definitions of population and sample are not introduced until high school grades, so that the developments of critical thoughts on the reliability of inductive reasoning could not be observed. On the contrary of it, strong emphasis lies on the calculation stuff of the sample data without any inference on the population prospective based upon the sample. Instead of the representative properties of a random sample, more emphasis lies on how to get a random sample. As a result of it, the fact that 'the random variability of the value of a statistic which is calculated from the sample ought to be inherited from the randomness of the sample' could neither be noticed nor be explained as well. No comparative descriptions on the statistical inferences against the mathematical(deductive) reasoning were found. Few explanations on the likelihood principle and its probabilistic applications in accordance with students' cognitive developmental growth were found. It was hard to find the explanation of a random variability of statistics and on the existence of its sampling distribution. It is worthwhile to explain it because, nevertheless obtaining the sampling distribution of a particular statistic, like a sample mean, is a very difficult job, mere noticing its existence may cause a drastic change of understanding in a statistical inference.