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Complementing Mathematical Thinking and Statistical Thinking in School

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 COMPLEMENTING MATHEMATICAL THINKING AND STATISTICAL

THINKING IN SCHOOL MATHEMATICS

Linda Gattuso1 and Maria Gabriella Ottaviani2

1
Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada; 2“Sapienza” Università di Roma, Italy

[email protected]; [email protected]

The introduction of statistics into school curriculum within the mathematics subject

poses multifaceted problems to mathematics teachers. This chapter first discusses the

relevance of developing mathematical and statistical literacy in schools, and reflect on

some current recommendations to teach statistics in the school mathematics and

challenges faced by the training of teachers.

Then the chapter underlines differences between mathematical and statistical thinking

and suggest that, taking account of their specificities, it is possible to generate teaching

strategies allowing the harmonious development of both mathematical and statistical

thinking in school. Some implications for teacher training are finally included.

1. INTRODUCTION

In the last few decades of the twentieth century unprecedented innovation in society

and, in particular, globalisation catalysed by modern telecommunications did justify a

new perceived complexity of reality enhancing “the central importance of mathematics

and its applications in today’s world with regard to science, technology,

communications, economics and numerous other fields” (UNESCO, 1997). The basic

aim of mathematics in the changing society had already been formulated, in the United

States of America, within the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)

Standards (1989), where the concept of “mathematical power” was presented as the

notion of empowering the students to be able to apply their mathematical knowledge,

concepts, and ability in problem solving, communication and reasoning.

In 2001, “use mathematics to solve problems and communicate” (Stein, 2001, p.17) was

listed as one of the 16 Equipped for the Future (EFF) standards needed by adults to

effectively carry out their different roles in society. The use of knowledge in concrete

situations–where the active participation of individuals is required–stresses the concept

of ‘competence’. For mathematics the curriculum shift from content topics to

competences has many consequences from the pedagogical point of view both for

teachers and for students, and implies a new teaching/learning style relying particularly

on problem-posing and problem-solving teaching methods. In particular, giving

evidence of workplace needs, Steen (2003) regarded mathematical thinking as “an

essential component of virtually every competency. Reasoning, making decisions,

solving problems, managing resources, interpreting information, understanding systems,

applying technology–all these and more build on quantitative and mathematical

acumen” (p. 56). When the information to be dealt with is quantitative in nature and

keen quantitative discernment is required, statistics and statistical thinking play an

important role in the mathematical curriculum.

This chapter aims to emphasize the necessity of complementing statistical thinking and

mathematical thinking in school and generating didactic strategies allowing statistics

and mathematics to evolve together, in an harmonious way.

2. WHY STATISTICS IS TAUGHT IN SCHOOL MATHEMATICS?

To be part of a modern society in a competent and critical way requires citizens to know
and to interpret collective/social phenomena in a broad sense, and understand the

variability, dispersion, and heterogeneity which cause uncertainty in interpreting, in

making decisions, and in facing risks. To pose and solve problems in everyday life may

require data collection and the ability to analyse the data in order to get information to

be interpreted and used in suitable ways.

However, in reality citizens will seldom have the opportunity to control all stages of the

statistical process of inquiry, particularly when they have at their disposal only data

collected, organised and interpreted by others to address others’ aims. In this case,

statistical competences and thinking become more and more important as they

encourage caution before using those data in a superficial way. That is why modern

citizens require both basic knowledge of statistics and statistical concepts, and also

statistical thinking.

The role of data, statistics and probability in school curriculum has been recognised in

the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Study titled

Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Mathematical literacy is one

of the three domains assessed by PISA in order to measure how well young adults, at

the age of 15, are prepared to meet the challenges of today’s knowledge societies.

According to the project “mathematical literacy is an individual’s capacity to identify

and understand the role that mathematics plays in the world, to make well-founded

judgements and to use and engage with mathematics in ways that meet the needs of that

individual’s life as a constructive, concerned and reflective citizen” (OECD, 2006, p.

72). For PISA assessment purposes the mathematical content that a person might utilise

in solving a problem has been organised by four overarching ideas: space and shape,

change and relationships, quantity and uncertainty (OECD, 2006). The three first ideas
form the heart of any mathematics curriculum, but it is not the same for the fourth. The

recognition from OECD that dealing with uncertainty is essential in everyday life is

obviously of primary importance in promoting the teaching of statistics and elements of

probability theory in school mathematics.

3. TEACHING STATISTICS IN THE MATHEMATICS CLASSROOM

Statistics is appearing more and more in school curricula; in some countries, statistics

has recently even entered the curricula of elementary schools. The situation in various

countries is described in the first chapter of this book. Statistics in schools is linked to

mathematics so mathematics teachers are responsible for its implementation.

Curriculum developers suggest a data-oriented approach to teaching statistics (Moore,

1997; Burrill & Camden, 2005) where students should: formulate research questions;

design investigations; collect data using observations, surveys, experiments; describe

and compare data sets; and propose and justify conclusions and predictions based on

data.

The GAISE project, for example, has developed useful guidelines for statistics

education (Franklin et al., 2005). However, as discussed in the Joint ICMI/IASE Study

Conference (Batanero, Burrill, Reading & Rossman, 2008), these recommendations are

seldom followed and doing statistics too often becomes synonymous with doing

computations and following protocols. Consequently, students finishing high school

understand very little statistics and are usually unable to utilise it in a critical way.

The problem is that the teachers generally have no preparation for teaching statistics,

little knowledge about statistics and almost never any training in statistics education.

They need a framework for understanding statistics, so that they can understand where
their students are coming from and where they are going (Ottaviani, Peck, Pfannkuch &

Rossman, 2005). Although there has been a lot of progress in the implementation of

statistics in the school curriculum, statistics education for future teachers is almost

nonexistent.

The situation is serious for elementary teachers who have little or no experience in this

field, and often demonstrate little interest in mathematics although they will have to

teach it. The situation is not much better for secondary teachers. Their mathematical

knowledge is more important but in some ways, particularly if mathematics is seen in a

formalistic view, this may even hinder their grasp of statistics. Most trainee secondary

teachers will follow a course in statistics but very few teacher training programs include

didactic of statistics. In fact, mathematic educators often casually admit their lack of

qualification on the subject.

Additional to gaps in teachers’ statistical knowledge, negative attitude and beliefs

towards statistics complicate the situation. “Negative attitudes are linked to perceived

difficulty, lack of knowledge and overly formal learning experience” (Estrada &

Batanero, 2008, p.5). Meletiou (2003) argued that beliefs about the nature of

mathematics affect instructional approaches and curricula in statistics and act as a

barrier to the kind of instruction that would provide students with the skills necessary to

recognize and intelligently deal with uncertainty and variability. Although the teaching

of mathematics has undergone many changes and proposes a constructivist approach,

long-held beliefs and attitudes of teachers are difficult to change. Statistical concepts

linked to context should be approached as social constructs, following the way

suggested by the data-oriented approach. In reality, concepts are too often presented to

students without any links to the real word context or at the most within artificial
examples and using a traditional and procedural approach that in many cases meet

pupils’ and parents’ expectations.

Obviously, knowing the theory of statistics is not enough to teach it. Teachers must

have the opportunity to develop their own statistical thinking. The education of pre-

service and in-service teachers has to be taken seriously. According to Batanero (2008),

initial and continuing teacher training courses for mathematics teachers need to be

redesigned completely. Future teachers must experience the same activities proposed for

students and experience the same difficulties, but obviously teacher knowledge needs to

be broader and deeper than that of the students they are teaching. In fact, many teachers

have no experience with data analysis and do not understand the role of variability and

the idea of distribution, which are key concepts for the development of statistical

thinking.

Today, teacher training is mostly under the auspices of mathematics educators.

However, statisticians involved with statistics education, and statistics educators must

cooperate and be involved in developing resources for teachers including high quality

teaching materials that, promoting the issue of teaching statistics, could help motivate

students to learn mathematics. To achieve these goals it is fundamentally necessary to

describe characteristics of statistics and to identify differences and similarities between

mathematical thinking and statistical thinking.

4. STATISTICS AND STATISTICAL THINKING

If statistics is different from mathematics, what is statistics? As is the case for any

science, to define statistics is difficult. In recent years it has been recognised that:

“Statistics has developed from two disciplines. The mathematical study of probabilities
and chance events and the scientific attempt to draw conclusions from data in the face

of inevitable error and imprecision. Modern statistics does not simply apply

mathematical results to determine the properties of particular statistical methods; it

includes a concern for discerning, describing, and confirming patterns and relationships

in data” (Thisted & Velleman, 1992, p. 41). In fact, statistics “makes a heavy and

essential use of mathematics, yet has its own territory to explore and its own core

concepts to guide the exploration” (Cobb & Moore, 1997, p. 814). It “is a subject whose

goal is to solve real-world problems” (Moore & Cobb, 2000, p. 617). Statistics may be

considered both as a discipline in itself and as a technique: “A special technique suitable

for the quantitative investigation of mass or collective phenomena, those phenomena

(…) whose measurement requires a collection of observations (…)” (Gini, 1966, p. 17).

The process of statistical investigation begins with some study questions providing a

basis for the design used to produce data, it goes on with the collection of the data, their

exploration and description, and eventually formal inductive inference is required if

conclusions are needed about the population or process from which the data were

drawn. The interpretation of the results coming from the data is the crucial point where

statistics comes in touch again with the questions that started all the process. Only at

this point does it become evident whether both the statistical methods used and the

statistical reasoning followed were effective in solving the problems giving rise to the

study. The investigative cycle: from problem, to data (collected, analysed and reported),

to problem forms the core of statistical thinking. In this vision of statistics there are

concepts - such as centre and variability - and measures of concepts – such as arithmetic

mean, median, mode and standard deviation, interquartile range, range -, not just

numbers and formulae.

To debate the differences between statistics and mathematics is important for statistics

educators who need “to carefully define the unique characteristics of statistics and in

particular the distinction between statistical literacy, reasoning and thinking” (Garfiel &

Ben-Zvi, 2007, p. 380). Each of these three capabilities can be differentiated according

to the level of statistical tools and concepts people understand and the connections

people are able to make among them. The focus in this chapter is on statistical thinking.

To simplify the comparison with mathematical thinking, this chapter uses the definition

of statistical thinking proposed by Scheaffer (2003): “data analysis and statistical

thinking … develop knowledge, beliefs, dispositions, habits of mind, communication

capabilities and problem solving skills that people need to engage effectively in

quantitative situations arising in life and work” (pp. 146-147), particularly in those

situations involving processes and their variation.

An active group of educators, psychologists, and statisticians have studied and

examined the change in the importance given by the statistics instruction when evolving

from the statistical techniques, formulas, computations and procedures towards

conceptual understanding of statistics (Garfield & Ben-Zvi, 2004) and have also made

connections between the research results and practical suggestions for teachers (Garfield

& Ben-Zvi, 2008).

5. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MATHEMATICAL THINKING AND STATISTICAL

THINKING IN SCHOOL

In some ways mathematical thinking and statistical thinking may appear contrary, but

when we underline their differences, we will see that they may support each other.

Where mathematics exploits deductive reasoning, statistics uses more inductive

reasoning. While mathematics promotes abstraction, statistics insists on interpretation in

context. Variation and measurement are dealt with differently in the two disciplines. In

summary reasoning in mathematics and statistics is different.

A more comprehensive picture of the situation can be found in Rossman, Chance and

Medina (2006) and Scheaffer (2006).

Although, more and more mathematics educators encourage a constructivist approach

for mathematics in the classroom, teaching too often is dominated by presenting

deterministic procedures even if most curricula propose a broader view of mathematics.

‘One question has one answer’. Traditional teaching is all too often focused on

developing procedures to solve closed problems. Even in the so-called open-ended

problems, the solutions are often pre-determined. This misleads students who look for

‘what the teacher wants’. Mathematics is about logical and deductive reasoning,

modelling, optimizating, and proving results that come logically from axioms and

definitions. Although not all mathematics teaching in schools follows this line, it is too

often procedural allocating more space to calculation than to understanding. However,

more and more mathematics educators and researchers are rejecting the traditional

approach and proposing that learning mathematics should develop the ability to create

mathematical models of real phenomena, pose hypotheses and to verify them using

mathematical tools (Sierpinska & Kilpatrick, 1998). In statistics, the same question with

the same data may lead to different ways of analysing and different solutions equally

defendable. This requires inductive reasoning, working with randomness, dealing with

counterintuitive results, drawing uncertain conclusions, and interpreting results.

Mathematics and statistics are different in the ways that they use numbers. Mathematics

mostly deals with numbers, their operations, generalisations, and ‘abstractions’ while
for statistics numbers are ‘data linked to a context’, which is essential to statistical

reasoning as well as to mathematical modelling. When doing statistics, one must know

the nature of data, and where and how they are produced, to be able to go on with the

analysis and to draw some conclusions. Mathematics, on the contrary, may rely on

context for motivation in the classroom, or as a source of research problems, but its goal

is abstracting, finding patterns and generalizing. The context has to be put to one side to

grasp the model or the structure. To synthesise: “In data analysis the emphasis is on

answering real questions rather than trying to fit those questions into established

theories” (Scheaffer, 2003, p. 145).

Variability and variation are found in mathematics and in statistics but with a different

sense. In the mathematics classroom students study the dependence of one variable on

the other, and the form of the link between the variables. In statistics variability, that is

the propensity to change of the observations for one data set is a fundamental idea

supporting the concept of distribution. Looking at averages without taking account of

variability (spread) is useless and will not lead to the understanding of the distribution

thus missing the whole pattern.

Furthermore mathematics and statistics have a different approach to measurement. In

mathematics, measurement goes with spatial configurations, and their transformation,

and abstraction. For example, at secondary school in a geometry problem there is no

need for rulers to show that two sides of a triangle have equal length; the equality of the

length can be deduced from hypotheses, definitions and theorems. Although a figure

may help understanding or finding the proof, its measures do not need to be accurate

and can be done approximately. Because statistics is mostly about understanding,

measuring and describing the real world, taking valid measurements is crucial. In any
investigation, the study question has to be well formulated and the data have to be

accurate.

6. ADVANTAGES OF DOING STATISTICS AND MATHEMATICS

TOGETHER IN SCHOOL

Despite the differences between statistical thinking and mathematical thinking, there are

certain advantages in studying statistics in the mathematics classroom. First, statistics

can stimulate motivation and develop problem solving abilities such as posing

questions, analyzing, representing and communicating quantitative information. If well

chosen and close to students’ interests, context, which is essential to statistics, often has

a positive effect on students’ motivation and involvement also in mathematics.

According to Kranendonk (2006), students playing with real data that makes sense

connects with them, and they get curious and often go beyond what they were asked to

do. Finding a new interest can modify a negative attitude towards mathematics. Using

context also agrees with new curricula in mathematics that advocate problem solving

imbedded in real world situations.

Second, much of statistics involves posing questions and finding ways to answer them.

A problem leading to the collection of data and analysis, even if elementary, will enrich

a child’s mathematical thinking. At the beginning, there is no need for complex

mathematics, but only for the ability to classify and group. The ability to formulate a

question and to be critical about it can be practiced even by kindergarten children

(Schwartz, 2006) and will transfer to the study of mathematics; is it not said that in

problem solving, when the question is posed the problem is almost solved?

Third, statistical analysis is not a linear process. After collecting and grouping data,
analysis comes next. Comparing groups, looking at the characteristics of the

distribution, identifying clusters, outliers, examining the differences in the medians,

means, mode and measures of spread may suggest a ‘rerouting’ in the analysis of data.

To go back and forth to find a solution or a proof can also be very helpful in

mathematics, but in the classroom it is unusual and not often shown. Instead, the result

is traditionally exposed in a straightforward manner without revealing the trials and

errors preceding the optimal solution shown on the board, as it would come from some

magical inspiration leaving the students helpless.

Finally, the construction of representations is essential in the study of data. Not only

does the representation have to be adequate and complete, but it helps to visualize

statistical distributions and give evidence to relationships among variables. Different

representations may also lead to a different grasp of the distribution. This is useful also

in mathematics where a graphical representation is a necessary prerequisite to modeling,

even if “the standard mathematical models ignore data production” (Cobb & Moore,

1997, p. 807).

The competence to communicate mathematical results is nowadays part of the

mathematics curricula recommendations. In statistics, interpreting and communicating

the results to answer the original question follows statistical analysis. It requires

convincing with ‘numerical’ arguments placed in their context and is completed with a

discussion of the various possibilities investigated thus assuming (more or less

consciously) variability and probability. Again, the development of this competency

may benefit to both disciplines.

The points underpinned above are about conceptual understanding and thinking both of

statistics and of mathematics. Besides, we should not forget that going through various
statistical procedures, a lot of mathematics is applied. From elementary arithmetic

(especially proportional reasoning) to advanced functions (e. g., the least squares line

method), many examples of mathematical concepts and tools are employed while doing

statistics and mathematical learning can only profit from this use (Gattuso, 2006, 2008).

Teachers must be aware of the benefits of making statistics part of their mathematics

teaching but at the same time be familiar with the specificity of each discipline.

7. IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHER TRAINING

An important key to the development of statistics teaching is teacher training. Well-

prepared teachers will willingly include statistics in their teaching. With adequate

training, teachers will be more confident and they will be able to encourage students to

speculate and explore phenomena, create their own data representations, make and test

their own conjectures, use appropriate technological tools, and spend time on discussion

and reflection instead of limiting the students to the practice of procedural skills and

execution of calculations.

Teachers surely need to acquire statistical knowledge and develop their statistical

thinking, but they also need training in the didactic of statistics to be able to follow their

students’ learning and reasoning and be able to spontaneously take advantage of

classroom situations to promote student learning. The didactic of statistics will

introduce teachers to misconceptions, difficulties and common errors involved in

learning statistics and will propose ways to handle them, thus allowing teachers to

develop the self assurance needed to teach adequately.

Also, it is important to pay attention to the teachers’ concerns about leaving out some

mathematical content by assuring and showing them that, while doing statistics, they are
really doing a lot of mathematics. It is also necessary to match mathematical concepts to

their applications in statistics so that one supports the development of the other

(Dunkels, 1990). Statistics can contribute to the learning of mathematics by introducing

mathematical concepts in realistic and motivating contexts. Measurement of phenomena

(such as bullying, free time, fertility, poverty), proportional reasoning and percentages,

graphical displays, averages, data modeling, and inductive reasoning are all points of

contact and tension between statistics and mathematics in school (Biehler, 2008).

Research is necessary to understand how to transform a possible uneasy junction of

such different disciplines into a fruitful one. This may require statistics educators to

work side by side with mathematics educators, respecting each other and showing how

concepts and knowledge of the two disciplines may evolve together in the classroom in

an harmonious way (Ottaviani, 2008).

During their training in statistics teachers should also be exposed to the use of

technological tools. Technology, in fact, can assist students in ‘doing’ and ‘seeing’

statistics and in reflecting on data. Different kinds of statistical tools exist. Some are

useful to visualise data and to analyse it in a simple way, some are more suitable for

developing an understanding of data and data exploration, and others are more useful

for understanding concepts connected to probability distributions. Besides this, the

World Wide Web offers a large set of downloadable data to support exploratory data

analysis and to assist in understanding variability (Garfield & Ben-Zvi, 2004). By

navigating in the Web it is possible to find resources for teachers to use in classrooms or

improve their knowledge of statistics and resources for those training the teachers. In

particular, the International Statistical Literacy Project (ISLP), under the umbrella of the

International Association for Statistics Education (IASE), provides an online repository

of national and international activities to disseminate statistical thinking

(www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/∼iase/islp/). Through this, teaching statistics in school

mathematics has the added bonus of students acquiring of a greater familiarity with

technological instruments used in everyday life.

Teacher training should also include discussion on assessment methods. Mathematics

teachers are used to utilising multiple choice, ‘right or wrong’ answer or short answer

questions, thus focusing on accuracy of computation, correct application of formulas, or

correctness of graphs and charts. These kinds of questions are not useful when statistical

thinking is involved. To get information about students’ statistical reasoning processes

requires the teachers to identify assessment methods that can reveal student

understanding of basic statistical concepts such as variability, visual representation of

data, centre and spread (Gal & Garfield, 1997). The importance of assessment is evident

when we notice that teachers are more and more motivated to do a better job with

statistics as long as assessing the achievement of statistical curriculum is required.

The support of statistics educators and practicing statisticians for mathematics teachers

is essential to help them cope with their new role as statistics teachers.

8. CONCLUSION

The “marriage” of statistics and mathematics in schools is difficult particularly due to

the school teachers’ general lack of statistical knowledge that makes it hard for them to

develop their own statistical thinking. In fact this chapter shows that mathematics and

statistics are different, at least, in the way that reasoning takes place, in the way they use

numbers, in the way that variability and variation are taken into account, and in their

approach to measurement. However, there are good reasons for mathematics school
teachers to teach statistics in their classes, such as, while students are doing statistics

they are really doing a lot of mathematics, and students with a negative attitude towards

mathematics can find a new interest. To have statistics taught in an adequate way in

school mathematics will take a long time. A lot of research activity needs to be carried

out by statistics educators in collaboration with mathematics education in order to offer

mathematics teachers appropriate instructional resources and strategies. There is no

doubt that to have statistical thinking diffused in society is fundamental so that both pre-

service and in-service mathematics teachers have to receive high quality training in

statistics.

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