Wednesday, April 11, 2012

April 11, 2012

How is stats different than mathematics?

















Stats concentrate on the context of the numbers.  The analysis

Mathematics is how you get the numbers/data















What questions would you ask if you were teaching a lesson on mean?
Mathematical   Find the mean of the class spelling scores.
Statistical - What do these scores/mean tell me?

What is the difference between statistical questions and mathematical questions?
Mathematical questions are asking you to find an answer/number. Finding the statistic is a mathematical problem.  
Statistical questions are asking to analyze those answers/number. Statistics is interpreting the data.


How to formulate an appropriate statistical question
  • Consider what the data is
  • where you are getting the data
  • formulate a question that is free of bias
  • Look at the research, make sure it is valid research
Key with Data Analysis - you don't do the analysis until you do the math.  The math comes first, the analysis comes next.

Data Collection
  • Tally marks
  • tables
  • pictographs
  • bar graphs
  • line graphs
  • frequency tables
  • line plots
  • stem and leaf plot
  • circle graphs
  • histograms
  • box and whisker plots













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