Statistical Investigations: Level 1

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The key idea of statistical investigations at level 1 is collecting data as evidence to tell a story about a question of interest.

At level 1 students should be working with survey data that they have collected about themselves and their classmates.  As a class with their teacher they should be starting to use the PPDAC (Problem, Plan, Data, Analysis, Conclusion) cycle in their investigations.  This involves posing an investigative question that they want to address, collecting and sorting data to answer the question, displaying the data, making statements about what the data shows and answering the question.

Students are typically interested in questions like “who in our class has the most children in their family?”, or “what is the favourite fruit in our class?”.  These pre-summary questions are suitable for students and this level and focus more on an individual than the aggregate of the data. 

Data displays are limited only by the students’ imaginations.  For example, students might show the different types of shoes in the class by taking one shoe from each student and building a display.  Students may well draw individual case plots, for example, they draw a graph of number of children in family, where the students’ names are on the horizontal axis and the number of children in family is on the vertical axis.

Students will be making statements about individuals in their displays. For example, Hemi, Jane and Tiana have four children in their family. These statements need to reflect what the data is showing.

This key idea is extended in the key idea of statistical investigations at level 2 where students are letting go of the individual’s story and moving towards telling the class story.