Probability distributions for teachers

This page (in progress) is aimed at helping teachers educate themselves about probability distributions. Call back from time to time as it will continually be improved.

If you master the materials here you can be confident that you have enough content knowledge (in contrast to pedagogical knowledge) to teach probability up to Year 13.

• The probability strand of the NZ Curriculum;     Key ideas expanded

If you want a very quick exposure to some key ideas about probability distributions and their applications before starting on something more comprehensive, see these three videos from Dr Nic’s Basics of Probability playlist on her YouTube channel (contain adds)

• Understanding Random Variables – Probability Distributions 1
• Discrete Random Variables: Distributions 2
• Understanding the normal distribution

Book chapter on discrete probability distributions (pdf) by Chris Wild & George Seber

This comprehensive resource is a pre-publication draft of the probability chapter for the book “Chance Encounters“. All of the answers to the exercises in the published chapter are here. Associated Powerpoint slides are here.

Discrete distribution Lectures

This is compiled from Lectures from the Stats 10x team at Auckland, narrated here by by Rachel Cunliffe. You may prefer to view this video before attacking the chapter above.

• • Powerpoint Slides;     Accompanying document (pdf)
  • Video [55 mins]

  Continuous distribution Lectures

  These Lectures are from the Stats 10x team at Auckland. They cover much of what you need and the ideas are very carefully explained by Matt Regan.

  • • Powerpoint Slides (used in the following videos)
    • Accompanying Notes — Word documents to accompany the set of slides
    • Gapped version (doc, pdf) for students, or use while viewing videos
    • Filled in versions(doc, pdf)
    • Zip file for download — containing both the Powerpoint slides and the Word documents
    • Screen capture videos of Matt Regan’s lectures (2012)
      • Video 1  [56 mins mins] (Slides 1-47)
      • Video 2  [45 mins] (Slides 51-70)
      • Video 3  [26 mins] (Slides 71-153)
    • Keywords: Probability, Probability distributions, Theoretical Probability
    • (Last updated: 22/09/19. Added: 22/09/19)

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