Combinatorial Thinking as Key for Introducing Hypothesis Testing—Evaluation of the Planned Secondary-School Reform in Hungary

We developed an educational programme to prepare a curricular reform in Hungary. In the framework of this project, we tested and evaluated a new curriculum design relying on combinatorial and probabilistic knowledge and skills. As opposed to inferential statistics, which is not part of secondary education, combinatorial thinking has a rich tradition in secondary education. The idea was to extend combinatorially introduced probability to a wider meaning of general frequencies by using probability to evaluate the credibility of hypotheses. The materials proved to be interesting, motivating, and understandable. Based on pre- and post-tests, students’ probabilistic knowledge improved significantly. It is worth noting that our approach also intensified their understanding about probability apart from the targeted content of hypothesis testing.