PROCEEDINGS OF THE 16TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION (Vol 2)
2013
Denver, Colorado
Initial Undergraduate Student Understanding of Statistical Symbols
Page: 2-465
In this study we use the tradition of semiotics to motivate an exploration of the knowledge of, and facility with, the symbol system of statistics that students bring to university. We collected a sample of incoming mathematics majors in their first semester of study, prior to taking any statistics coursework, and engaged each in a task-based interview using a think-aloud protocol with questions designed to assess their fluency with basic concepts and symbols of statistics. Our findings include that students find symbols arbitrary and difficult to associate with the concepts. Second, that generally, no matter the amount of statistics that students took in high school, including Advanced Placement courses, they have relatively little recall of topics. Most can calculate the mean, median and mode, but they generally remember little beyond that. Finally, students have difficulty connecting practices or procedures to meaning.