A new study has investigated whether challenges faced by educators in teaching statistics could be reduced by changing how it is taught and revealed that there is no ‘right way,’ giving flexibility to educators to choose how best to teach the subject.
Students studying subjects ranging from psychology and medicine to law are often required to learn statistics, but many find the subject challenging. Two common difficulties are understanding statistical concepts and experiencing anxiety about statistics.
Experts from the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham have published a new study in Psychology Teaching Review that explored these challenges and whether changing the order in which people encounter equations and worked examples, and the type of example used, affected their learning. The findings suggest that the order and example type did not affect either statistics understanding or anxiety. This means educators may have considerable flexibility in deciding how to introduce statistical concepts such as standard deviation.
Dr Kieran Lyon from the School of Psychology is lead author on the paper, he said: “We performed this study to find out whether changing the order of teaching materials and the examples used would reduce statistics anxiety and improve understanding. Neither order or example type affected these outcomes. This is good news, because it means that either order and example type is equally effective, and educations can choose without worrying that it will negatively affect students' experience or grades.”
Statistics is often introduced through lectures that present abstract equations before students practice applying them to example data. The researchers investigated whether putting the worked example first, or changing the example type, could make statistics easier to understand and less anxiety-provoking.
The researchers conducted an online experiment focused on standard deviation, a measure of how spread-out numbers are around their average. Participants learned the equation for standard deviation and completed a worked example involving calculating the standard deviation of a set of numbers using Microsoft Excel.
The study tested two different teaching orders: equation-first, where participants learned the equation before completing the worked example; and example-first, where participants completed the worked example before learning the equation.
The researchers also compared two types of worked example. One used real-world data on life expectancy from the United Nations, while the other used a deliberately fun and fictional scenario involving the heights of aliens from another planet.
The researchers found that neither the order in which the material was presented nor the type of example used affected participants’ understanding of statistics or their statistics anxiety.
Nikki Dean Marshall, Assistant Professor in the School of Psychology is co-author on the study and added: “Many students approach statistics with anxiety, so educators are always looking for ways to make the subject more accessible. Our findings suggest there is no single 'right' way to teach statistics. Whether teaching begins or ends with equations or whether examples are real-world or simulated, people appear to learn just as effectively which is great news as it gives educators the flexibility to adapt their teaching to the needs of their learners.”
Psychology Teaching Review
Experimental study
People
The effect of equations and real-life data on statistics anxiety and understanding
4-Nov-2026