UMass Amherst SRRI -- SERG

Statistics Education Research Group

SERG is a group of researchers with backgrounds in psychology and education who have been collaborating since the late 1970’s. The group’s mission is to better understand how people reason about probability, statistics, and data analysis, and to use this understanding to improve the teaching of these topics at both the university and K-12 levels. Research initially focused on how adults reason about statistics and probability before receiving any formal instruction. More recent work has focused on younger students learning data analysis and how their understanding develops over instruction.

Latest SERG News

SERG symposium on probability at NCTM
03/10/2008 - 3:04pm
Tinkerplots at NCTM
03/10/2008 - 2:53pm
Konold gives STEM Institute talk
10/29/2007 - 8:00pm

Current SERG members:


Konold, Cliff	Research Associate Professor of Psychology
Kazak, Sibel	Postdoctoral Research Associate
Miller, Craig D.	Senior Software Engineer

SERG publicatons (reprints, preprints, technical reports, etc.):

See the SRRI publications list.

Current SERG projects:

Model Chance

Simulation software and classroom activities to help middle school students understand probability

Model Chance is a three-year project funded by the National Science Foundation to develop simulation software and classroom activities to help middle school students learn about probability. The simulation tool will be integrated into our data-analysis software, TinkerPlots.

Data Modeling

Constructing data, modeling worlds: Collaborative investigation of statistical reasoning

This project aims to change the way students – and teachers – think about math and science and is part of a larger endeavor by Peabody College to “reform the schooling of mathematics and science,” says co-investigator and Professor of Science Education Rich Lehrer. This innovative project focuses on learning rather than performance as the standard by which educational methods are judged.

Past SERG projects:

TinkerZeum

Involving museum visitors in data analysis explorations

Funded by the National Science Foundation, the Tinkerzeum Planning Project was a one-year collaborative project exploring the feasibility of involving museum visitors in data analysis. These studies, which took place at the Museum of Science in Boston and at the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield MA, have helped us understand the kinds of data and exhibits that lead to compelling museum investigations and the types of additional supports visitors require to begin exploring data.

ViSoR

Advanced visualization tools for understanding statistics

This project addresses the growing importance of data literacy as a fundamental skill for living in a democratic society and the disheartening fact that few people have a solid understanding of data. It addresses this need by studying how advanced visualization tools can affect teachers’ and students’ develop understanding of several crucial statistical concepts.

TinkerPlots

Developing tools and curricula for enhancing data analysis in the middle school

TinkerPlots was a research and development project aimed at creating a new type of data analysis software tool for instructional use in data analysis and statistics in middle schools.

Published SERG “products”:

ProbSim

Software and activities for teaching probability via simulations

Prob Sim is a Macintosh (Classic) program with accompanying instructional activities designed for teaching probability via simulations in grades 6-13.

TinkerPlots Software

Software for dynamic data exploration

TinkerPlots is a software construction set of basic operations (stack, order, separate) that allows students to build their own plots to analyze data.

TinkerPlots is especially useful for mathematics teachers striving to teach students data analysis in line with recommendations of the NCTM’s Curriculum Standards, and to inquiry-based science classrooms where students collect and analyze data as part of formulating and testing their own hypotheses.

Scientific Reasoning Research Institute

SERG