This paper focuses on developing students' informal inference skills, reporting on<br>how a group of third grade students formulated and evaluated data-based inferences<br>using the dynamic statistics data-visualization environment TinkerPlotsTM (Konold &<br>Miller, 2005), software specifically designed to meet the learning needs of students in<br>the early grades. Children analyzed collected data using TinkerPlots as an<br>investigation tool, and made a presentation of their findings to the whole school.<br>Findings from the study support the view that statistics instruction can promote the<br>development of learners' inferential reasoning at an early age, through an informal,<br>data-based approach. They also suggest that the use of dynamic statistics software<br>has the potential to enhance statistics instruction by making inferential reasoning<br>accessible to young learners.
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education