Assessing students' connected understanding of statistical relationships

We believe that connected understanding among concepts is necessary for successful statistical reasoning and problem solving. Two of our major instructional goals in teaching statistics at any level are to assist students in gaining connected understanding and to assess their understanding. In this chapter, we will explore the following questions: (1) Why is connected understanding important in statistics education?, (2) What models of connected understanding are useful in thinking about statistics education?, (3) How can connected understanding be represented visually?, and (4) What approaches exist for assessing connected understanding?