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Activity Number:
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62
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Type:
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Contributed
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Date/Time:
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Sunday, August 3, 2003 : 4:00 PM to 5:50 PM
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Sponsor:
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Section on Statistical Education
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| Abstract - #300535 |
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Title:
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A Missing Link Towards Understanding Variability: The Unexpected Difficulty of Histograms
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Author(s):
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Carl Lee*+ and Maria Meletiou-Mavrotheris
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Companies:
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Central Michigan University and
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Address:
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Dept. of Mathematics, Mount Pleasant, MI, 48859-0001,
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Keywords:
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graphical presentation ; statistical thinking ; variation
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Abstract:
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The central element of statistical thinking is variation. One of the first representations of variation in an introductory statistics course is histogram. The histogram is also widely used in the later part of the course as a tool for demonstrating differences in variation between individual samples and sampling distribution. The fact that students have exposure to histograms in their daily life often appears in the media seems to imply that upon completion of the course most students would have developed at least basic understanding about the construction and applications of histograms. The findings reported in the article came from a study where we examined over 200 students' final examination papers, which included questions specifically designed to investigate different levels of understanding about the construction and interpretation of histograms employed to demonstrate the concept of variability. This article dsecribes and examines the four main difficulties in constructing and interpreting histograms identified by the study. Some implications for research and suggestions for instruction will also be discussed.
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