James Nicholson

Durham University | DU · School of Education

This paper appeared in the July 2024 issue of the journal Teaching Statistics (Wiley). It summarizes some aspects of the work and academic life of our friend and colleague, Jim Ridgway, Durham University UK, who passed away in early May 2024, after a short illness [----] For a copy of the full paper - Please send via ResearchGate a request to Iddo...

The first three chapters of this book have identified societal demands for understanding Civic Statistics (Chap. 1 ), described specific features of the statistical and mathematical information citizens receive about civic issues (Chap. 2 ), and mapped out the facets and tools (skills, knowledge, mental and motivational tools) needed to critically...

How might you use data visualisation in your teaching? Here, we offer some ideas, and some provocations to review your teaching. We begin with an invitation to examine some of the historical landmarks in data visualisation (DV), to classify the data presented, and to describe the benefits of a sample of the DV to users. Early uses of DV by Nighting...

This chapter presents a comprehensive conceptual framework of 11 facets and tools which together describe the knowledge, skills and dispositions that (young) adults need in order to comprehend, critically evaluate, communicate about, and engage with Civic Statistics regarding ‘burning’ societal issues, and that may enhance citizen empowerment. The...

Civic Statistics by its nature is highly interdisciplinary. From a cross-curricular perspective, teaching and learning Civic Statistics faces specific challenges related to the preparation of teachers and the design of instruction. This chapter presents examples of how Civic Statistics resources and concepts can be used in different courses and sub...

Civic Statistics by its nature is highly interdisciplinary. From a cross-curricular perspective, teaching and learning Civic Statistics faces specific challenges related to the preparation of teachers and the design of instruction. This chapter presents examples of how Civic Statistics resources and concepts can be used in different courses and sub...

How might you use data visualisation in your teaching? Here, we offer some ideas, and some provocations to review your teaching. We begin with an invitation to examine some of the historical landmarks in data visualisation (DV), to classify the data presented, and to describe the benefits of a sample of the DV to users. Early uses of DV by Nighting...

To appear as Chapter 3 in a book (forthcoming early 2022 from Springer), with 23 peer-reviewed chapters, written in coordination by an international group of experts from ten countries. ___________WHERE TO FIND AND DOWNLOAD A PRE-PRINT (AND SEE THE BOOK'S FULL TABLE OF CONTENTS)____________: Please access my personal webpage at the University of...

This chapter will appear as Chapter 4 in a forthcoming book (early 2022) from Springer, which will include 23 peer-reviewed chapters, written in coordination by an international group of experts from ten countries_____________ WHERE TO FIND AND DOWNLOAD A PRE-PRINT AND SEE THE TABLE OF CONTENTS_________: please access my personal webpage at the Uni...

Important statistical ideas can be introduced via visualizations without heavy mathematics, hence can become accessible to a broader citizenry. Along a few selected examples, from historical to modern, with technology-based data visualizations, we highlight the potential of data visualizations to enhance students’ capacity to reason with complex da...

Large amounts of data, relevant to decision making and political argument, are now available. However, these data are often accessible only to people with reasonably developed skills in data acquisition and exploration; less skilled users must depend on interpretations by others. This chapter shows how large amounts of evidence relevant to decision...

Introduction: conceptions of statistical literacy One can trace advocacy for what we might now call ‘critical statistical literacy’ (CSL) at least as far back as the eighteenth century. Writing early in the French Revolution, Condorcet (1792/1994) proposed the idea of savoir liberateur – knowledge about governance and social inequality that would e...

White and Gorard make important and relevant criticisms of some of the methods commonly used in social science research, but go further by criticising the logical basis for inferential statistical tests. This paper comments briefly on matters we broadly agree on with them and more fully on matters where we disagree. We agree that too little attenti...

This document summarizes a workshop given at the IASE Roundtable held July 19-22, 2016 at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany. The Roundtable was organized by the International Association for Statistical Education (IASE) in collaboration with the ProCivicStat (PCS) project. Information about the conference can be foun...

This paper is a response to Gorard's article, ‘Damaging real lives through obstinacy: re-emphasising why significance testing is wrong’ in Sociological Research Online 21(1). For many years Gorard has criticised the way hypothesis tests are used in social science, but recently he has gone much further and argued that the logical basis for hypothesi...

High quality data are available on a very wide range of topics. However, there are barriers to be overcome before citizens engage with these data. First is access; data are often distributed across different websites. Second is exposure; data need to be presented in the most commonly used information sources. Third is engagement – creating a climat...

There has been a great deal of concern in recent times about the capacity of social science students at all levels to cope with the demands of quantitative methods in the curriculum. The Nuffield Foundation funded a project Reasoning from Evidence to produce some data visualisations and associated curriculum materials to support the teaching of soc...

The concept of statistical literacy needs to be refreshed, regularly. Major changes in the ways that data can be accessed from government and non-government agencies allow everyone to access huge databases, to create new variables, and to explore new relationships. New ways of visualizing data provide further challenges and opportunities. The O...

Technology has revolutionised society and it has revolutionised the way in which statistics, as a professional discipline, is done. The collection of data is growing exponentially both in relation to the quantity of data assembled on any particular measure and also in relation to the range of topics, and the measures, on which data is collected. Ac...

Technology has revolutionised society and it has revolutionised the way in which statistics, as a professional discipline, is done. The collection of data is growing exponentially both in relation to the quantity of data assembled on any particular measure and also in relation to the range of topics, and the measures, on which data is collected. Ac...

The concept of statistical literacy needs to be refreshed, regularly. Major changes in the ways that data can be accessed from government and non-government agencies (the ‘semantic web’) allow everyone to access huge databases, to create new variables, and to explore new relationships. New ways of visualising data provide further challenges and opp...

Condorcet (1792) advocated the idea of savoir liberateur – knowledge that would allow people to escape their current circumstances via better knowledge. A number of international agencies – notably UNESCO, The United Nations (UN) and The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) – are committed to programmes which set out to eng...

1. Introduction and background to the development project at Queen’s University, Belfast Over the past few years statistics has become increasingly prominent in national curricula across the world. In the United Kingdom the Government has attached a specific priority to the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in schools as a vehi...

While statistical literacy is gaining much more recognition as something that all citizens need in order to function fully in modern society, there is much less agreement as to exactly what is meant by the term. This chapter discusses what statistical literacy is, why it is important for children at school and for teachers, and the need for our und...

The starting point for theory should be a clear understanding of phenomena. This poses a problem for teaching social sciences, particularly at the school level, because every social phenomenon is influenced by a number of factors. There is a wealth of data collected on a large scale by governmental and non-governmental agencies that can be used...

Many statistical agencies are attempting to inform citizens about the state of society, and current social changes. The literature on statistical literacy suggests that this might be an uphill struggle. Here, we use a press release from Ireland’s Central Statistical Office to show how important social trends that are masked in the press release can...

Introductory courses in statistics often progress from simple analysis to anova and interaction. The epistemology is close to elementary physics–simplify, decompose, analyse, then add the bits together again, and you will understand the phenomena. Most interesting problems in social sciences are multivariate, and variables interact in complex ways....

OECD has launched its Global Project that aims to develop new measures of the nature and progress of societies and to increase the capability of citizens to understand and use this information. We contend that this needs to be accompanied by a developing programme at school level to equip the next generation to understand relationships in complex d...

OECD has launched its Global Project that aims to develop new measures of the nature and progress of societies and to increase the capability of citizens to understand and use this information. We contend that this needs to be accompanied by a developing programme at school level to equip the next generation to understand relationships in complex d...

OECD has launched its Global Project that aims to develop new measures of the nature and progress of societies and to increase the capability of citizens to understand and use this information. We contend that this needs to be accompanied by a developing programme at school level to equip the next generation to understand relationships in complex d...

Although most interesting problems are multivariate (MV) and students and citizens need to be able to reason using MV data, appropriate challenges are rarely encountered in class. In this paper we argue that the curriculum (and ideas about statistical literacy) should encompass reasoning with MV data. Statistics education can occur in a range of di...

Statistical literacy (SL) has long been a concern in mathematical education. Information is becoming increasingly important in policy making for governments and in business environments, highlighting the need for improving levels of statistical literacy – including the need to deal with multivariate data. New technologies are providing new modes of...

Many subjects in the school curriculum engage with contexts where multiple factors interact. Historically however, data have rarely been used at school level in such contexts because of the difficulties inherent in understanding multiple variable relationships. Stronger links across traditional subjects has proved an elusive aspiration for curricul...

We report a study where 195 students aged 12 to 15 years were presented with computer-based tasks that require reasoning with multivariate data, together with paper-based tasks from a well established scale of statistical literacy. The computer tasks were cognitively more complex, but were only slightly more difficult than paper tasks. All the task...

Evidence-based policy requires sophisticated modelling and reasoning about complex social data. The current UK statistics curricula do not equip tomorrow's citizens to understand such reasoning. We advocate radical curriculum reform, designed to require students to reason from complex data.

Many subjects in the school curriculum engage with contexts where multiple factors interact. Historically however, data have rarely been used at school level in such contexts because of the difficulties inherent in understanding multiple variable relationships. Stronger links across traditional subjects has proved an elusive aspiration for curricul...

Reasoning with data is already pervasive in society, and its importance as a life skill is increasing. We argue that the current statistics curriculum in the United Kingdom at the secondary level does not prepare our young people adequately, and suggest ways in which it could be improved.

Much of the data presented by politicians and the media is multivariate in its nature. However, in the UK at least, the general public has little training to deal with such information. It is reasonable to explore the school curriculum to determine the nature and extent of students ’ preparation for dealing with multivariate data. In the UK

Reasoning from multivariate evidence is pervasive in political speeches and in the media, but is largely absent in UK schools. Currently, we do not prepare young people to understand important social debates, nor to make informed decisions about their personal well-being. We have evidence that students can work with multivariate data if supported a...

Computers facilitate reasoning with complex data. We report a study where 195 students aged 12 to 15 years were presented with computer based tasks that require reasoning with multivariate data, together with paper based tasks from a well established scale of statistical literacy. All the tasks fitted well onto a single Rasch scale; computer tasks...

The paper reviews the nature of statistics in the UK National Curriculum. While there is great opportunity for statistics to inform thinking in a range of disciplines, there is little coherence in the planning of activities for children. Formal assessment of statistical ability focuses on procedural knowledge, applied to univariate and bivariate pr...

The paper reviews the nature of statistics in the UK National Curriculum. While there is great opportunity for statistics to inform thinking in a range of disciplines, there is little coherence in the planning of activities for children. Formal assessment of statistical ability focuses on procedural knowledge, applied to univariate and bivariate pr...

The paper reviews the nature of statistics in the UK National Curriculum. While there is great opportunity for statistics to inform thinking in a range of disciplines, there is little coherence in the planning of activities for children. Formal assessment of statistical ability focuses on procedural knowledge, applied to univariate and bivariate pr...

The availability of technology opens up opportunities for students to explore larger datasets and to gain experience of the effects of random variation. We have been involved in a development project to produce materials, with a sound pedagogical basis, to support the construction of accurate conceptual understanding of key statistical concepts. Th...

1. Summary This study sought to investigate perceptions of students' conceptual challenges among A-Level statistics teachers and examiners. The nature and extent of participants' insights were assessed using a questionnaire administered in either written form or via a semi-structured interview. The questionnaire comprised two sections: (i) free-res...

This article attempts to integrate the crucial ideas of sampling and estimation in the teaching of linear regression. It won first prize in the recent PSI competition.

Statistics and probability are included to varying degrees in the mathematics curriculum of most countries at the secondary school level. The rapidly changing nature of these subjects together with the explosion in computing power and software has, however, led to some changes in the emphasis given in these subjects. In particular in some countries...

Assessment tasks and scoring schemes convey information to students and teachers about the nature of each discipline, and what is valued. It is important that tasks provoke desirable classroom practices, and motivate students to continue to engage with the discipline. Tasks from high-stakes national examinations are presented that are likely to hav...

Although most interesting problems are multivariate (MV) and students and citizens need to be able to reason using MV data, appropriate challenges are rarely encountered in class. In this paper we argue that the curriculum (and ideas about statistical literacy) should encompass reasoning with MV data. Statistics education can occur in a range of di...

In the information rich environment of the 21st Century, the ability to interpret data, both raw and statistically summarised, will be increasingly important, as will the capacity to critically analyse arguments based on such data. In this context, this paper gives a brief overview of the different approaches evident in the new A-level Statistics s...