1512-Week 2

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ publication, Principles & Standards for School Mathematics is a great resource. This week we are looking specifically at Ch. 3: Standards for School Math: Data Analysis and Probability. This section is about getting students to formulate questions that can be answered by data. It also discusses using data wisely.

Teaching students to “READ” the data is very important. There is lots misuse of data (statistics) as a way to sway public opinion. This connects to topics like reading the media, like television advertisements. One example would be analyzing infomercial adds…”only 4 easy payments of $19.95 plus shipping.” Teaching that simple math to find out that the item is really $85. Or “one in ten use this product” to find out that 1/10=only 10%.

With these standards in place, increasing in sophistication across the grades by the end of high school students should have a sound knowledge of elementary statistics. Work in data analysis and probability offers a natural way for students to connect math with other subjects and with experiences in their daily lives. The reasoning skills they develop will also serve them in work and in life in the future. Student in the primary grades start with easy topics to connect to students. These topics could be what kinds of pet students have or favorite kinds of pizza and show it with the use of tally sheets or charts. Students later grow to topics such as recycling or conservation in the middle grades. With these first steps, it leads students to being able to compare other data from books, newspapers, and the Internet.