Subject: Re: [MATHEDCC] Percent questions in Statistics
From: Bret Taylor (bret@iag.net)
Date: Sat Jan 29 2000 - 15:36:41 EST
At 11:08 AM 1/29/00 -0800, Colleen Ryan wrote:
>
>
>I have noticed that my statistics students have a very hard time with
>percent questions. Even the students who have done well in the
>prerequisite course, Intermediate Algebra, have trouble with them.
>
>I would love to find out if this is unique to my school (Oxnard College in
>southern California) or whether it is widespread.
>
>Below is a question they have a lot of trouble with.
>
>Question:
>Here is some data in the form of a two way table which classifies each
>student as to gender and also whether they brought a calculator to the
>first day of class.
>
> Men Women
>Yes Calculator 4 24
>No Calculator 13 20
>
>(To Teacher: After a brief explanation of how two-way tables work and how
>the marginal totals and grand total are obtained, please ask the following
>question.)
>
>What percent of the people who brought a calculator are men?
>
>If anyone teaching Elementary Statistics with an Intermediate Algebra
>prerequisite does this, please let me know what percentage of your class
>answered correctly.
I gave this question to a class consisting of 16 men and 12 women. 4 of the
men answered correctly and 6 of the women did. So, 25 percent of the men
answered correctly and 50% of the women did. Hence, in answer to your
question, 75% of the class answered correctly. (Sorry, couldn't resist. :-)
Actually, I don't teach stat now, but from past experience I can sympathize
with you. I think the problem is two fold - percent and conditional
probability. Weaker students have trouble with both concepts.)
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