Literature Index

  Bar graphs and histograms are core statistical tools that are widely used in statistical practice and commonly taught in classrooms. Despite their importance and the instructional time devoted to them, many students demonstrate misunderstandings when asked to read and interpret bar graphs and histograms. Much of the research that has been conducted about these misunderstandings has been with students in introductory statistics classes at the college level. In this article, students in grades 6–12 completed multiple-choice and constructed-response questions about bar graphs and histograms as part of a larger study. The same misunderstandings that college-level students demonstrate were found in these younger students.  

Throughout introductory tertiary statistics subjects, students are introduced to a multitude of statistical concepts and procedures. One such term, significance, has been given considerable emphasis in the statistical literature with respect ot the topic of hypothesis testing. However, systematic research regarding this concept is very limited. This paper investigates students' coneptual and procedural knowledge of this concept through the use of concept maps and standard hypothesis tests. Eighteen students completing a first course in university -level statistics were interviewed twice during a 14-week semester.

In this paper the initial results of a theoretical-experimental study of university students' errors on the level of significance of statistical tests are presented. The "a priori" analysis of the concept serves as the base to elaborate a questionnaire that has permitted the detection of faults in the understanding of the same in university students, and to categorize these errors, as a first step in determining the acts of understanding relative to this concept.

The concept of statistical variation in a probability distribution is closely connected to the concept of sample space in a probability task. One must have some sense of the possible outcomes in a probability task in order to predict the likely variation range that will occur during repeated trials of that probability task. A survey version of a NAEP probability task was given to 652 mathematics students in grades 6 - 12 to obtain information on students' understanding of the sample space. Subsequently 28 students from grades 8-12 were given an interview version that included a simulation of the task. Survey results indicate that a higher percentage of students taking advanced mathematics correctly answered the probability task than was predicted by the NAEP data. Results of the interviews suggest that students who at first thought incorrectly about the probability task were likely to change their minds after seeing the variation in results of sets of repeated trials of the task.