| Abstract |
| delMas, R., Garfield, J., and Ooms, A. (2005). Using Assessment Items to Study Students’ Difficulty Reading and Interpreting Graphical Representations of Distributions. Fourth International Research Forum on Statistical Reasoning, Thinking and Literacy 2005. |
| This paper describes the analysis of assessment items used in a large scale testing of high school and college students to learn how students reason about graphical representations of distribution. We focus on the use of items that reveal some consistent errors and misconceptions student exhibit when presented with graphical representations of data. We find that perhaps because of students' early exposure to bar graphs and time plots, they tend to confuse bar graphs and time plots with histograms. In addition, students have difficulty correctly reading information from histograms and identifying what the horizontal and vertical scales represent. We offer some reasons for why it is important for students to be able to correctly read and interpret histograms, and offer suggestions for how to help develop this type of reasoning. |