Year 11 Students’ Informal Inferential Reasoning: A Case Study about the Interpretation of Box Plots

Maxine Pfannkuch

doi:10.29333/iejme/181

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Maxine Pfannkuch

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Abstract

Year 11 (15-year-old) students are not exposed to formal statistical inferential methods. When drawing conclusions from data, their reasoning must be based mainly on looking at graph representations. Therefore, a challenge for research is to understand the nature and type of informal inferential reasoning used by students. In this paper two studies are reported. The first study reports on the development of a model for a teacher’s reasoning when drawing informal inferences from the comparison of box plots. Using this model, the second study investigates the type of reasoning her students displayed in response to an assessment task. The resultant analysis produced a conjectured hierarchical model for students’ reasoning. The implications of the findings for instruction are discussed.

Keywords

Statistics Education Research
Box Plots
Secondary Students
Informal Inferential Reasoning

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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Research Article

INT ELECT J MATH ED, Volume 2, Issue 3, October 2007, 149-167

https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/181

Publication date: 08 Aug 2007

Article Views: 3151

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How to cite this article

APA

Pfannkuch, M. (2007). Year 11 Students’ Informal Inferential Reasoning: A Case Study about the Interpretation of Box Plots. International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, 2(3), 149-167. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/181

Vancouver

Pfannkuch M. Year 11 Students’ Informal Inferential Reasoning: A Case Study about the Interpretation of Box Plots. INT ELECT J MATH ED. 2007;2(3):149-67. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/181

AMA

Pfannkuch M. Year 11 Students’ Informal Inferential Reasoning: A Case Study about the Interpretation of Box Plots. INT ELECT J MATH ED. 2007;2(3), 149-167. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/181

Chicago

Pfannkuch, Maxine. "Year 11 Students’ Informal Inferential Reasoning: A Case Study about the Interpretation of Box Plots". International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education 2007 2 no. 3 (2007): 149-167. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/181

Harvard

Pfannkuch, M. (2007). Year 11 Students’ Informal Inferential Reasoning: A Case Study about the Interpretation of Box Plots. International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, 2(3), pp. 149-167. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/181

MLA

Pfannkuch, Maxine "Year 11 Students’ Informal Inferential Reasoning: A Case Study about the Interpretation of Box Plots". International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, vol. 2, no. 3, 2007, pp. 149-167. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/181