NCTM Standard: Data Analysis and Probability

In its overview to standards for the middle grades, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) observes, “Middle-grades mathematics . . . needs to prepare students to deal with quantitative situations in their lives outside school.” Statistics enters the mathematics curriculum strongly here as a set of tools and concepts to make sense of the quantities of data encountered in the everyday world.

The expectation at the middle school level is that students will build on the statistical base acquired in earlier years. They will now formulate more complex questions, design studies, collect appropriate data, and represent their data graphically. New representations to be learned include scatterplots, box plots, and stem-and-leaf plots. To answer their questions and reach conclusions, students will then select and use statistical measures, including the mean and interquartile range, to analyze the data.

Teachers play a leading role in providing experiences that engage students in developing understanding of these statistical ideas. This publication aims to put in your hands standards-based teaching ideas that expand and support your own repertoire as you help your students deal with the quantitative world all around them.

For a full set of the expectations for the Data Analysis and Probability Standard, you can visit the online chapter at http://standards.nctm.org/document/chapter6/data.htm. Another valuable resource from NCTM is the book (with CD) Navigating Through Data Analysis in Grades 6-8.

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Copyright June 2008 — The Ohio State University. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0424671. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.