Abstract
This study explores the emergence of second graders’ informal reasoning about distribution in a carefully planned learning environment that includes extended encounters with open-ended Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) activities. The current case study is offered as a contribution to understanding the process of constructing meanings, language, representations and appreciation for distributions at an early age of schooling. It concentrates on the detailed qualitative analysis of the ways by which three second grade students (age 7) started to develop views (and tools to support them) of distributions in investigating real data, inventing and using various informal data ideas and representations. In the light of the analysis, a description of what it may mean to begin reasoning about distribution by young students is proposed, and implications to teaching, curriculum and research are drawn.
| Original language | English |
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| Title of host publication | Reasoning about distribution: A collection of current research studies. Proceedings of the Fourth International Research Forum on Statistical Reasoning, Thinking, and Literacy (SRTL-4) |
| Publisher | University of Queensland Press |
| Number of pages | 22 |
| State | Published - 2005 |