This study was designed to analyze if preferences for certain statistical representations existed for a group of pre-service secondary mathematics teachers. Twenty-three surveys were distributed to two classes of pre-service teachers enrolled in a mathematic education course and 18 competed surveys were returned. Questions on the survey focused on five major statistical ideas: (1) typical value for a data set, (2) standard deviation, (3) spread/distribution of a data set, (4) recognition/effect of outliers, and (5) comparing two or more data sets. Students were asked to indicate the representation that they found most helpful in answering these questions. Students chose from box plots, dot plots, histograms, and data tables. The conclusions drawn from this study involved the use of two types of statistical analyses combined with observed trends within the data. A goodness of fit test determined that within each of the main ideas, representational preferences existed. Confidence intervals were used in combination with observed preferences to determine if and where individual representational preferences existed. The results indicated that these pre-service teachers typically focused on median as typical value for a data set, felt that any of the graphs could be used to determine distribution, lacked a complete understanding of standard deviation, and that their initial focus on individual points when recognizing outliers developed into a more global view of the data as they reasoned about the outliersâ effects. Discussions and implications from this survey along with recommendations for future research are included.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NCSU/oai:NCSU:etd-06192008-130035 |
| Date | 08 July 2008 |
| Creators | Henderson, John Tolliver |
| Contributors | Dr. Jeffery Thompson, Dr. Karen Hollebrands, Dr. Hollylynne Lee |
| Publisher | NCSU |
| Source Sets | North Carolina State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-06192008-130035/ |
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