© 2017 Solly Matshonisa Seeletse, Tshepo Matsose, Gezani Richman Miyambu and Eunice Lebogang Sesale. This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 3.0 license. American Journal of Applied Sciences Original Research Paper Statistical Demonstration of Superiority of High-Frequency Short-Tests in Assessment When Teaching Statistics to Enhance Higher Student Pass Rates Solly Matshonisa Seeletse, Tshepo Matsose, Gezani Richman Miyambu and Eunice Lebogang Sesale Department of Statistics and Operations Research, Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University, PO Box 107, MEDUNSA, 0204, South Africa Article history Received: 09-01-2017 Revised: 05-07-2017 Accepted: 04-10-2017 Corresponding Author: Solly Matshonisa Seeletse Department of Statistics and Operations Research, Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University, PO Box 107, MEDUNSA, 0204, South Africa Email: solly.seeletse@smu.ac.za Abstract: When facilitating learning, quick and small assessments can assist to detect areas that require further reinforcement and also identify students who need extra help in understanding the concepts taught. This paper demonstrates with Statistics, a difficult subject to pass at Higher Education Institution (HEI) level, that when these tests are administered at high frequencies and in large numbers, students are boosted to perform better, seemingly because there is no chance to pause learning. In addition to the higher performance shown, the students’ marks were more stable when checked using the Coefficient of Variation (CV) measure. This was an indication that in the case of many assessment exercises, the higher student performances obtained were also more reliable and had a better chance to be replicated when the exercise was repeated. Keywords: Assessment, Descriptive Statistics, High-Frequency Short- Tests, Statistical Tests Introduction Planning and managing every aspect of human life can be made easy with Statistics, which is a vital subject in HEIs (Umameh, 2011). Therefore, Statistics literacy is important for every person who cannot reach expertise in the subject. On the other hand, ideally, Statistics expertise is important for use in various sectors and industries such as business and government departments, among others. Historically though, this subject has high failure rates in HEIs. Makgato and Mji (2006) indicate that in South African HEIs, students fail Statistics at a very high rate. Various interventions to improve pass rates were tried in the past, including researches to investigate reasons for the high failure rates (Attwood, 2014). However, recently, several uses of assessment methods have been attempted with the aim to improve the pass rates in this subject. This paper applies tests of hypotheses and statistical methods to compare the approach of giving many short tests after chunks of learning various Statistics component concepts relative to the approach of using few long tests in assessing students in Statistics. It fundamentally demonstrates that the former approach in assessing leads to better student performance in the Statistics subject. Considerations When Teaching Statistics Maths Subject Statistics is a mathematics requiring learning of concepts through constant practice to enhance student performance. Various researchers (Benson, 2011; Manoah et al., 2011; Miheso, 2012; Makgato and Mji, 2006) have identified factors believed to cause poor performance as facilitators not using student-centred tactics, lack of experiments and practical modelling activities and lack of professional exposures to articulate issues related to the subjects. Eshiwani (2001) points out that poor performance is due to poor teaching methods, inadequate exercises and an acute shortage of books. Furthermore, reinforcing teaching is not included on the students’ experiences. This, in some cases, consistently delays the pace to cover the full syllabus and thus leading to poor student performance. Syllabus Coverage Tswani (2009) counsels that rigorous teaching and learning principles promotes an environment of motivation to achieve. Buschang et al. (2012) highlight also that learning reinforcement was lacking or inadequate and students receive inadequate feedback on their work. As an intervention towards reducing the