A First Step to Understanding the Difficulty in Teaching Sampling Distributions, Sampling Error, and Statistical Inference

Even after having taken an introductory statistics class, many students continue to struggle with the concepts of sampling distributions, sampling error, and statistical inference. As a first step in identifying ways of more effectively approaching these topics, the poster will examine methods currently used in popular text books and propose an alternative based on using binomial and Poisson distributions. The examination of textbooks will identify variability or lack of variability in the approaches to teaching these topics with particular attention being paid to the use of statistical language. The poster will also illustrate how exercises useful in teaching the three topics of sampling distributions, sampling error, and statistical inference.