Skew and bias

Abstract

The focus of this paper is a study designed to help students overcome the lexical ambiguity associated with the terms skew and bias. In the study, an activity to address the difference between the everyday and statistical definitions of skew was developed and implemented by an instructor of introductory statistics. Open-ended definitions of the target words from students who saw the activity in class and students who did not see the activity in class were compared. The results from this study suggest that the activity did not help students to provide better complete statistical definitions of the target words. It is recommended that the activity be updated to combat misconceptions of introductory statistics students about the words skew and bias better than the activity studied.