Developing Statistical Perception

Cliff Konold
Scientific Reasoning Research Institute
University of Massachusetts Amherst

ABSTRACT:
Statistics is too often portrayed as a set of methods for collecting and analyzing data. More fundamentally, it is a way of seeing the world. I describe our efforts to understand the perceptions and ideas young students bring to bear on data and how we work to shape students’ perceptions to make them more expert like. To facilitate learning, we have built into the data visualization software, TinkerPlots, tools that support and then build on novice perceptions. More recently, we have added modeling capabilities which students use to create and explore “worlds” of their own making. In this way, we hope to develop the crucial understanding that statistics is not only about seeing, but also about questioning what we see.