Convergence on Studying Reasoning Processes : A Case Study in Statistics

2 This chapter begins with a memory experiment, and you the readers are the participants! Please read the brief story below and try to memorize it. There will be recall questions asked later. (You may recognize the story, as it is quoted verbatim from an already published work [Gick & Holyoak, 1983].) The General A small country was ruled from a strong fortress by a dictator. The fortress was situated in the middle of the country, surrounded by farms and villages. Many roads led to the fortress through the countryside. A rebel general vowed to capture the fortress. The general knew that an attack by his entire army would capture the fortress. He gathered his army at the head of one of the roads, ready to launch a full-scale direct attack. However, the general then learned that the dictator had planted mines on each of the roads. The mines were set so that small bodies of men could pass over them safely, since the dictator needed to move his troops and workers to and from the fortress. However, any large force would detonate the mines. Not only would this blow up the road, but it would also destroy many neighboring villages. It therefore seemed impossible to capture the fortress. However, the general devised a simple plan. He divided his army into small groups and dispatched each group to the head of a 3 different road. When all was ready he gave the signal and each group marched down a different road. Each group continued down its road to the fortress so that the entire army arrived together at the fortress at the same time. In this way, the general captured the Introduction This chapter focuses on the problem of improving young adults' statistical reasoning skills , with a particular emphasis on transfer outside the original learning context. Effective transfer is critical here because statistical reasoning is applicable across a wide variety of domains and in daily life; statistical reasoning skill is of little value if it can only be applied in the statistics classroom. And yet, students have great difficulty learning statistical reasoning skills in a transferable These instruction-oriented studies document that many current approaches to teaching statistics—even modern reform-based pedagogy—leave significant room for improvement, but they provide relatively little guidance on how to proceed. Learning the appropriate representations for knowledge (not overly specific, not overly general) is key for …