AIMS Topics
The AIMS materials are organized by statistical topic (briefly described below). Each topic has a set of lesson plans (note: a lesson corresponds to a class session, and may include one or more activities), student handouts for each activity, annotated student handouts (which provide sample student responses to selected questions), and sample data sets (data gathered from students that have been used in these activities). In addition, there is a suggested sequence of activities based on the research literature (see Garfield and Ben-Zvi, 2008 for more details). For a more detailed description, or to access the AIMS materials for a particular topic, select the topic from the links on the left.
Data
The nature and role of data, types of data, and methods of collecting and producing data.
Models and Modeling
The idea of a statistical model, the uses of models in statistics, essential ideas of probability, the normal distribution and regression as statistical models
Distribution
The idea of statistical distribution, understanding and interpreting graphical representations of data, introduction to the ideas of shape, center, and spread.
Center
The idea of center and representativeness; measuring center of a distribution: uses, properties and interpretation of means and medians.
Variability
The importance of variability in statistical thinking, variation is everywhere, sources of variability; measuring variability of a distribution.
Comparing Groups
Reasoning with center and variation in comparing groups and making informal inferences, using boxplots.
Samples and Sampling
Sampling variability and sampling distributions, the effect of sample size, the implications of the Central Limit Theorem.
Inference
Informal ideas of inference, tests of significance, confidence intervals, p-values
Covariation
Scatterplots, correlation and simple linear regression