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Statistics
What’s average?
This article reports on the experiences of several middle school teachers who designed units of work based around average, developing critical thinking using a starting context from the media. A summary of the unit, 'What does it mean to be average?' is presented including student work samples.
tdt_S_stack1.pdf 275.09 kB
Building informal inference with TinkerPlots in a measurement context
This article presents a series of four investigations involving measurement that lead to an appreciation of the types of questions that informal inference can answer. Topics include measuring accurately, measuring a group, comparing measurements on two groups, and comparing measurements on two variables.
tdt_S_watson1.pdf 296.99 kB
Box plots in the Australian Curriculum
This article begins with the definition of box plot in the Australian curriculum, includes variations on the definition, reports the difficulties students have with box plots, and makes suggestions for the effective use of box plots in making decisions in informal inferential contexts.
tdt_S_watson2.pdf 900.15 kB
Inference as prediction
This article explains how the two fundamental ideas of statistics -- variation and expectation -- underpin all aspects of our teaching and learning related to statistical investigations.
tdt_S_watson3.pdf 86.26 kB
Eye colour and reaction time: An opportunity for critical statistical reasoning
This article describes the classroom activity developed by a teacher to challenge students’ beliefs in a media article claiming the people with brown eyes have faster reaction times.
tdt_S_watson5.pdf 704.36 kB
What is 'typical' for different kinds of data?
The purpose of this article is to present and discuss in a down-to-earth fashion, with authentic data sets, the two types of data and the relationship between the three measures of typicality introduced in the curriculum. Although the mean, median and mode have been in mathematics text books for many years, it is sobering to read in the research literature that teachers’ understanding of the measures is little different from that of students, and that both struggle.
tdt_S_whatistypical.pdf 605.72 kB
