In this curriculum and evaluation standards for School Mathematics (1989), the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics recommends that the K-12 mathematics curriculum be broadened and designates statistics as an area deserving increased attention. The standards document promotes the concept that statistics be learned through the study of real problems with real data collected by the students. Rather than focus on developing formulas from which answers are simply computed, teachers should present statistics in a coherent fashion and develop the topic as a whole problem-solving process. The standards also encourage the use of appropriate technologies for learning mathematics. Appropriate technology allows us not only to expand what mathematics is taught but also to enhance how that mathematics is learned.
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