See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/271836030

Malaysian students' misconceptions about measures of central tendency: An

error analysis

Conference Paper · February 2015

DOI: 10.1063/1.4907430

CITATIONS READS
12 1,491

2 authors:

Zaleha Ismail Shiau Wei Chan

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Nanyang Technological University
107 PUBLICATIONS   498 CITATIONS    90 PUBLICATIONS   266 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

supply chain development for entrepreneurship and business View project

MATHEMATICAL THINKING AMONG PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS: USING DYNAMIC MATHEMATICS SOFTWARE VERSUS PAPER AND PENCIL View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Shiau Wei Chan on 05 February 2015.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Malaysian students' misconceptions about measures of central tendency: An error
analysis
Zaleha Ismail and Shiau Wei Chan

Citation: AIP Conference Proceedings 1643, 93 (2015); doi: 10.1063/1.4907430

View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4907430
View Table of Contents: http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/proceeding/aipcp/1643?ver=pdfcov
Published by the AIP Publishing

Articles you may be interested in

A hybrid symplectic principal component analysis and central tendency measure method for detection of
determinism in noisy time series with application to mechanomyography
Chaos 23, 023131 (2013); 10.1063/1.4812287

On a Student's Misconception about Gravity and Acceleration

Am. J. Phys. 30, 528 (1962); 10.1119/1.1942091

Student Misconceptions
Am. J. Phys. 11, 227 (1943); 10.1119/1.1990482

Misconceptions About Science

Am. J. Phys. 11, 163 (1943); 10.1119/1.1990467

Analyzing students' misconceptions about galaxies

Phys. Today

This article is copyrighted as indicated in the article. Reuse of AIP content is subject to the terms at: http://scitation.aip.org/termsconditions. Downloaded to IP:
103.1.71.118 On: Thu, 05 Feb 2015 11:37:23
 Malaysian Students’ Misconceptions about Measures of
Central Tendency: An Error Analysis
Zaleha Ismaila and Shiau Wei Chanb
a
Associate Professor Dr, Faculty of Education, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia.
b
Dr, Faculty of Education, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia.

Abstract. Earlier studies revealed that students encountered difficulties in understanding the concept of measures of central
tendency. However, there is negligible empirical support concerning this problem in Malaysian context. Thus, the purpose of
this study is to identify misconceptions held by tenth grade students from Malaysian secondary schools regarding measures
of central tendency. The instrument used was a statistical reasoning test. It was administered to 412 tenth grade students from
nine different schools. Overall, the results demonstrated that tenth grade students held considerable misconceptions about
measures of central tendency. Interestingly, some misconceptions were new which had not been identified in previous
research. This study provides implications for instructors and researchers planning learning goals as well as designing
instructional activities and assessments for future studies.
Keywords: Misconceptions, Measures of central Tendency, Secondary education
PACS: 01

INTRODUCTION
Statistics was considered as difficult domain to study because the statistical concepts are complex (Garfield and
Ben-Zvi, 2008). A number of students would feel nervous when learning statistics. Poor grasp of mathematical ideas
may cause difficulties troubles in statistics. Some of students perceived that statistics is similar to mathematics; that
is it has only one accurate answer (Ben-Zvi and Garfield, 2004). As a result, the difficulties that faced by the
students in comprehending statistical ideas may lead to misconceptions in statistical reasoning (Templaar, Gijselaers
and van der Loeff, 2006). Misconceptions, is described as a prototype for mistakes that reveals the misinterpretation
of statistical ideas (Cohen et. Al., 1996).
Groth and Bergner (2005) asserted that the measures of central tendency among students were incompatible.
From earlier studies, it was found that students had a lot of misconceptions in measures of central tendency, for
instance mode (Huck, 2009), median (Cooper and Shore, 2008), and mean (Olani et. al., 2011). When the data are
presented in the form of graphs, students confronted the problems as well (Lee and Meletiou-Mavrothesis, 2003).
According to Burrill & Camden (2005), most of the students cannot master the statistical concepts due to the
instruction that emphasize on the examination rather than conceptual knowledge. In addition, the conceptual
understanding of students is unable to be well measured owing to the traditional questions in the statistics (Garfield
and Chance, 2000). Students tended to learn by remembering the formulas with no comprehension of statistical
concepts which incapable to foster their conceptual understanding (Broers and Imbos, 2005).
In Malaysia topic of statistics are incorporated into mathematics and additional mathematics syllabus. Malaysian
students learn statistics from primary three to secondary five. However, this does not stop them from misconceptions
and making mistakes in solving basic statistics as indicated in the TIMSS data (Foo and Idris, 2010). Despite a
multitude of studies regarding misconceptions in statistics, little is known about the misconceptions regarding
measures of central tendency held by Malaysian students. This study was conducted to discover more about
Malaysian secondary students’ misconceptions in measures of central tendency. The findings of this study will
provide guidelines for preparing learning objectives, assessments and instructional activities to reduce
misconceptions.

LITERATURE REVIEW
A measure of central tendency is regarded as main aspects in making conjecture on data analysis and in
comprehending the ideas of distribution. It is a crucial component in inferential and descriptive statistics (Garfield
and Ben-Zvi, 2008). Average is judged as measures of central tendency which comprised of mode, median, and
mean by several statisticians. Nonetheless, average was interpreted in a different way based on problem context as
argued by Konold & Pollastek (2002, 2004), for instance fair share, data reduction, signal in noise, and typical

The 2nd ISM International Statistical Conference 2014 (ISM-II)

AIP Conf. Proc. 1643, 93-100 (2015); doi: 10.1063/1.4907430
© 2015 AIP Publishing LLC 978-0-7354-1281-1/$30.00

93 to the terms at: http://scitation.aip.org/termsconditions. Downloaded to IP:

This article is copyrighted as indicated in the article. Reuse of AIP content is subject
103.1.71.118 On: Thu, 05 Feb 2015 11:37:23
 value. Besides, in mathematics curriculum, average is deemed as the synonym for arithmetic mean (Sirvik and
Kmetic, 2010). There are seven properties of average as declared by Strauss and Bichler (1988). The first property
of the average is put between the extreme values and the second property is the summation of the deviations from
the average is equal to zero. The third property is the average is affected by values except the average while the
fourth property is the average is not primarily the same as one of the added values. The average could be a fraction
that has no matching part in physical reality is the fifth property. The sixth property is the zero value ought to be
considered when computing the average and the seventh property is the value of the average is indicative of the
values that were averaged.
Furthermore, Mokros and Russell (1995) found out five approaches to obtain the average that employed by the
students from fourth, sixth and eighth grades including average as mode, average as algorithm, average as
reasonable, average as midpoint, and average as mathematical point of balance. Those approaches were classified as
two groups, i.e. approaches that do not view average as representative including average as algorithm and average as
mode, as well as approaches that view average as representative including average as reasonable, average as
midpoint, and average as mathematical point of balance. The students that utilized mode approach were incapable to
understand average while the students that utilized algorithm approach was only give emphasis to the calculation of
average as corroborated in the study of Chatzivasileiou, Michalis & Tsaliki (2010). On the contrary, students that
employed the approaches of midpoint, reasonable, and mathematical point of balance worked towards
comprehending the idea behind average.
Moreover, six stages for average understanding recognized by Watson and Moritz (2000), namely Preaverage
(P), Single Colloquial Usage for Average (U), Multiple Structures for Average (M), Representation with Average
(R), Application of Average in One Complex Task (A1), and Application of Average in Two Complex Task (A2).
Students did not utilize the average term orally at the Preaverage (P) level while students stated the average concepts
by using the term like “normal” and “add” at the Single Colloquial level (U). At the Multiple Structures for Average
(M), students used more than one term to explain average, such as, “most,” “middle,” and “add-and-divide.” At the
Representations with Average (R) level, students not just provided meanings for average, but also relate the data set
with the average measure. Students solved one or two complex tasks at the two highest levels (A1 and A2) such as
working backward from a decimal mean value, and finding a weighted mean.
Earlier research showed that students held misconceptions in measures of central tendency from primary to
tertiary stage. Clark et al. (2007) asserted that even excellent the students felt that it was hard to understand the idea
of mean. Such situation happened because procedural knowledge was focused mostly in the schools and the
instructors taught the students mean as computation algorithms and rules (Sirvik and Kmetic, 2010). According to
Mevarech (1983), novice students incorrectly linked the four axioms of addition and multiplications for decimals,
i.e. closure, associate law, identity element, and inverse element to the computation of mean. With regards to
closure, the idea of weighted mean did not comprehended by the students as they did not calculate the means of two
different groups separately. For associate law and identify element, students did not employ it in calculating mean.
In addition, students wrongly interpreted the inverse elements as negatives.
Cooper & Shore (2008) conducted a study on 186 undergraduate students to find out their measures of central
tendency when the data was represented graphically. The results demonstrated that students had misconceptions in
interpreting measures of central tendency for stem and leaf plots and histograms. Another study implemented by
Biehler (1996) on students from Grade 12, it was found that students encountered problems when read the data
representations, for instance the histogram and bar graph. According to Groth (2003), the deficient of skill to read
different types of graphical representations would become impediment for the students while solving the tasks of
data analysis. A number of students were not capable to link the grouped data representations and ungrouped data
representations (Bright and Friel, 1998). In the study conducted for this paper, the goal was to discover the
misconceptions held by tenth graders concerning measures of central tendency. The findings obtained from the data
analysis were employed to answer the research questions, i.e. ‘What are the misconceptions held by tenth grade
students in regards to measures of central tendency?’

METHODOLOGY
Participants

The participants in this study were 412 tenth grade students, randomly selected from 14 classes of nine
secondary schools in Malaysia. Among them, 172 students (41.74%) were male and 240 students (58.25%) were
female. There were 229 Malay (55.58%), 159 Chinese (38.59%), 22 Indian (5.34%), 1 Kadazan Dusun (0.24%) and

94 to the terms at: http://scitation.aip.org/termsconditions. Downloaded to IP:

This article is copyrighted as indicated in the article. Reuse of AIP content is subject
103.1.71.118 On: Thu, 05 Feb 2015 11:37:23
 1 Iban (0.24%). The age of the participants was between sixteen and seventeen years. This study was carried out at
the end of year in November 2011. All the participants had finished studying statistics in the tenth grade syllabus.
There is one topic of statistics in the tenth grade mathematics and additional mathematics syllabus respectively. In
the mathematics classes, they had learnt about the concept of class interval, the concept of mode and mean of
grouped data, the concept of cumulative frequency, the concept of measures of dispersion to solve problems, and
represent and interpret data in frequency polygons to solve problems. They also learnt about the concept of measures
of central tendency and measures of dispersion to solve problems in the additional mathematics classes. The
duration used to learn statistics topics was around one month. They had conventional instruction in learning tenth
grade statistics where instructors used chalk and talk method. During the mathematics or additional mathematics
period, the participants were given the statistical reasoning test in classroom. The total time given for this test was
one hour. The teachers administrated the test and asked the students to answer the question carefully. The test were
then collected and used as the data for this study. Due to the ethical issues, the data, school names and the identities
of the student participants in this study will remain confidential. As a result, a code is used to represent the school
and participants, for example, A001 can be broken down as follows: “A” represents the school, and “001” refers to
the number of student for this study.

Instrumentation

The instrument used in this study was a statistical reasoning test with five main questions as well as sub-
questions. This test was designed to assess the misconceptions held by students regarding measures of central
tendency (Question 1 to 4) and measures of variability (Question 5). Nevertheless, this paper will only discuss
misconceptions about measures of central tendency from Question 3. All the questions used were categorized
according to the table of specification according to the cognitive domain of Bloom’s Taxonomy (1956). Garfield and
Ben-Zvi (2008) contended that statistical reasoning corresponds to the Comprehension Level in Bloom’s Taxonomy
and may include some features from the Application and Analysis levels. Thus, in the statistical reasoning test used,
there are 7 items that test Comprehension, 7 items that assess Application abilities, and 2 items that examine the
student’s ability to Analysis. These items were developed based on the features of statistical reasoning where
students interpreted the data and connected one concept to another in first part of the test. In the second part of the
test, the students were asked to explain responses. The Question 3 is shown as below:

The following histogram in Figure 1 shows the scores ˄1-10˅obtained by 36 students in a mathematics test.

Answer the following questions according to the histogram:

3ai) Find the mean score obtained by the students. 3aii) Explain how you get the answer.
3bi) Find the mode score obtained by the students. 3bii) Explain how you get the answer.
3ci) Find the median score obtained by the students. 3cii) Explain how you get the answer.
3di) Which measure of central tendency (mean, mode, and median) is the most suitable to
be used to represent the score obtained by students? 3dii) Explain why.

FIGURE 1. Scores obtained by students in mathematics test

95 to the terms at: http://scitation.aip.org/termsconditions. Downloaded to IP:

This article is copyrighted as indicated in the article. Reuse of AIP content is subject
103.1.71.118 On: Thu, 05 Feb 2015 11:37:23
 FINDINGS
Table 1 reveals the misconceptions of students regarding mean for Question 3a.i and 3aii The percentage of
misconceptions M16, M17, and M18 were 10.68%, 5.1%, and 0.24% respectively. These results are in accordance
with the findings from Cooper and Shore’s (2008) research. Besides, there were eight new misconceptions
discovered from this study. Students were discovered to have a tendency towards M14 and M15. Both M14 and
M15 were held by 0.49% of students respectively. Another newly discovered misconception being discovered was
M19 and it was held by 0.24% of students. Furthermore, M20 was also the newly discovered misconception held by
0.49% of students. Another newly discovered misconception was M21 and it was the method used by 0.24% of
students. In the new misconception, M22, 2.67% of students believed in “dividing the product of frequency and
value of data by number of data on the horizontal axis (omitting 4).” Moreover, the new misconception, M23 was
held by 2.91% of students. Finally, 2.18% of students held the misconception M24 that the answer could be found
by “dividing the product of frequency and value of data by number of data by the sum of values on the horizontal
axis.” 30.1% of the students gave answers that were indeterminable or indiscernible due to wrong calculations,
incomplete solutions or a failure to show their steps. 6.55% of students did not attempt the question at all.

TABLE 1. Question 3a
% Correct: 37.62%
No Misconceptions Number of Percentage
students (%)
M14 Finding the mean of height of bars and dividing by the sum of values on the horizontal 2 0.49
axis
111 2  0  3  3  4  6  8  7 36
0.65
0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10 55
M15 Finding the mean of values on horizontal axis 2 0.49
0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10 55
1.53
111 2  0  3  3  4  6  8  7 36
M16 Finding the mean of height of bars and dividing by number of data on the horizontal axis 44 10.68
(omitting 4)
111 2  0  3  3  4  6  8  7 36
3.6
10 10
M17 Finding the mean of height of bars and dividing by number of data on the horizontal axis 21 5.10
(including 4)
111 2  0  3  3  4  6  8  7 36
3.27
11 11
M18 Finding the mean of values on horizontal axis (including the value of 4) and dividing by 1 0.24
number of data on the horizontal axis (omitting 4)
0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10 55
5.5
10 10
M19 Finding the mean of values on horizontal axis (omitting the value of 4) and dividing by 1 0.24
frequency of score
0  1  2  3  5  6  7  8  9  10 51
1.42
1  1  1  2  0  3  3  4  6  8  7 36
M20 Finding the mean of midpoint for ungrouped data in histogram 2 0.49
0.5(1)  1.5(1)  2.5(2)  5.5(3)  6.5(3)  7.5(4)  8.5(6)  9.5(8)  10.5(7) 273.5
7.597 7.6
111 2  0  3  3  4  6  8  7 36
M21 Finding the mean of midpoint for ungrouped data in histogram and dividing by midpoint 1 0.24
0.5(1)  1.5(1)  2.5(2)  5.5(3)  6.5(3)  7.5(4)  8.5(6)  9.5(8)  10.5(7) 273.5
4.52
0.5  1.5  2.5  3.5  4.5  5.5  6.5  7.5  8.5  9.5  10.5 60.5

M22 Dividing the product of frequency and value of data by number of data on the horizontal 11 2.67
axis (Omitting 4)
0(1)  1(1)  2(1)  3(2)  4(0)  5(3)  6(3)  7(4)  8(6)  9(8)  10(7) 260
26
10 10
M23 Dividing the product of frequency and value of data by number of data by number of 12 2.91
data on the horizontal axis (including 4)

96 to the terms at: http://scitation.aip.org/termsconditions. Downloaded to IP:

This article is copyrighted as indicated in the article. Reuse of AIP content is subject
103.1.71.118 On: Thu, 05 Feb 2015 11:37:23
 0(1)  1(1)  2(1)  3(2)  4(0)  5(3)  6(3)  7(4)  8(6)  9(8)  10(7) 260
23.64
11 11
M24 Dividing the product of frequency and value of data by number of data by the sum of 9 2.18
values on the horizontal axis
0(1)  1(1)  2(1)  3(2)  4(0)  5(3)  6(3)  7(4)  8(6)  9(8)  10(7) 260
4.73
0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10 55
Irrelevant 124 30.10
No attempt 27 6.55

Table 2 displays the two misconceptions M25 and M26 held by students and revealed by their answers to
Question 3b. There were 6.31% of students who believed that “mode is referred to as a peak, as the highest point on
the curve and as the top of the curve”(M25) as claimed by Huck (2009). In this question, the highest frequency in
histogram was 8, so students B035, F187, and J248 use this number as their answer. On the other hand, a new
misconception (M26) was observed in this question where 3.88% of students recognized “mode is the number
appears the most in the score,” as was the case for students A008, F160, and J278. The Number 1 appeared three
times in the histogram, so they selected 1 as the answer. 4.85% of students’ solutions were not appropriate and
11.17% of students did not put in the effort required to answer the problem.

TABLE 2. Question 3b
% Correct: 73.79%
No Misconceptions Number of students Percentage (%)
M25 Mode is referred to as a peak, as the highest point on the curve and as 26 6.31
the top of the curve (8)
M26 Mode is the number appears the most in the score (1) 16 3.88
Irrelevant 20 4.85
No attempt 46 11.17

From the Table 6, five misconceptions held by the students in Question 3c1 can be observed. There were 5.58%
of students having a tendency towards M27 and 2.18% of students held misconception M28. These two
misconceptions were consistent with the results of the study conducted by Cooper and Shore (2008). In this
question, three new misconceptions were discovered. The percentage of students who held misconceptions M29,
M30, and M31 were 3.64%, 16.26%, and 0.73% respectively. A high percentage of students, 39.56%, solved this
problem improperly and some of them did not show their work. A further 22.82% of students did not attempt this
question.
TABLE 3. Question 3c
% Correct: 9.22%
No Misconceptions Number of students Percentage
(%)
M27 Finding the median of frequencies of the data values 23 5.58
0, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 8, 7
M28 Finding the median of the values on the horizontal axis 9 2.18
(1) 0 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 or
(2) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

M29 Dividing the number of data on the horizontal axis by two (1) or (2) = 15 3.64
5.5
M30 Adding the frequency of score and dividing it by two 67 16.26
M31 Finding median using formula = = 18.5 3 0.73
Irrelevant 163 39.56
No attempt 94 22.82

For Question 3d, 28 students (6.80%) knew that median was the most suitable measure of central tendency to
represent the data, but they did not know how to explain their answer as was the case for students F143, I232, J263,
K288, L309, L323, and M357. 152 students, including students A007, B033, D085, F128, F133, H212, I224, K28,
M334, and N411, believed that mean was the most appropriate measure of central tendency to characterize the data.
There were 73 students who answered “mode” including students C072, F130, F156, K281, and N403. 8 students
gave answers other than mean, mode, and median including G180, K285, and L330. The findings in this question

97 to the terms at: http://scitation.aip.org/termsconditions. Downloaded to IP:

This article is copyrighted as indicated in the article. Reuse of AIP content is subject
103.1.71.118 On: Thu, 05 Feb 2015 11:37:23
 confirmed the argument put forth by Zawojewski and Shaughnessy (2000) which stated that students faced
difficulties choosing the appropriate measures of central tendency to best represent data sets. The results from this
study also proved that students perceived that mean was a more appropriate measure of central tendency than
median (Callingham, 1997).

DISCUSSIONS
In this paper, the findings from Question 3 were used to answer the research question – [What are the
misconceptions held by tenth grade students in regards to measures of central tendency?] Misconceptions regarding
the mean of histograms were consistent with the result of the study conducted by Cooper and Shore (2008) including
M16, M17, and M18. The misconception concerning mode in histograms from this study verified the assertion of
Huck (2009), i.e. M25. Likewise, misconceptions regarding the median of histograms corroborated the findings of
Cooper and Shore’s (2008) study, which were M27 and M28. In addition to verifying the findings of other
researchers, this study also uncovered several new misconceptions. Eight new misconceptions regarding the mean
of histograms were discovered from the results of Question 3a, namely, M14, M15, M19, M20, M21, M22, M23 and
M24 as further defined in Table 1.
Also, a new misconception regarding the mode of histograms was found as demonstrated in Table 2, i.e. M26. In
addition, three new misconceptions concerning the median of histograms were discovered too, namely M29, M30
and M31 as discussed in Table 3. According to delMas, Garfield, and Ooms (2005) and Cooper and Shore (2008),
data represented graphically will cause students to have misconceptions. Such situations occur because of the
students’ limited understanding of graphs [30]. In short, the tenth grade students in this study held several faulty
conceptions in descriptive statistics, especially regarding measures of central tendency. Educators and teachers
should work towards remedying this situation. These misconceptions were happened because the students were not
taught on how to give explanation when solving the questions of measures of central tendency in schools. In
addition, they solved problems procedurally and memorize the formula without understanding the concepts.
From the findings, we noticed that a few students were able to solve the first part of the question, but could not
solve the second part of the question. Such situations occurred because the students seldom dealt with tasks that
required them to give explanations, thus they were not familiar with those tasks. Some students had a poor
understanding of statistical vocabulary needed to explain their thinking. On the other hand, some students were
unable to answer the first part of the question but managed to answer the second part of the question. This may have
stemmed from mathematical errors, failure to show any steps used to obtain their solution, or using inappropriate
methods to solve the problem.
In this study, many students did not attempt to answer some of the items and left them blank. This may have
occurred because they did not know how to solve the problem, did not want to answer the question or they did not
have enough time There were also some students who executed other methods to solve the problems incorrectly.
Their thinking and reasoning should be investigated. In future studies, these students should be interviewed in order
to understand their behavior.

CONCLUSION
By and large, Malaysian ten graders harbor numerous misconceptions regarding measures of central tendency.
Some misconceptions were similar to misconceptions discovered in earlier studies and a number of new
misconceptions were diagnosed in this study. The new findings of this study contribute to the statistics field. In
future studies, more structured empirical studies involving intervention are needed to overcome the misconceptions.
This study provides a direction for instructors and researchers to think about learning goals, use of appropriate
instruction and assessments tools in the statistics classroom to promote statistical reasoning.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study is funded by the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia through
FRGS grant (Grant Vote No. R.J130000.7831.4F187).

98 to the terms at: http://scitation.aip.org/termsconditions. Downloaded to IP:

This article is copyrighted as indicated in the article. Reuse of AIP content is subject
103.1.71.118 On: Thu, 05 Feb 2015 11:37:23
 REFERENCES
Ben-Zvi, D. and Garfield, J. (2004). Statistical literacy, reasoning, and thinking: Goals, definitions and challenges. In Ben-Zvi, D
& Garfield, J (eds.), The challenge of developing statistical literacy, reasoning, and thinking (pp. 3-15). Dordrecht, The
Netherlands: Kluwer Academic.
Biehler, R. (1996). Students’ difficulties in practicing computer-supported data analysis: Some hypothetical generalisations from
results of two exploratory studies. Proceedings of the 1996 International Association for Statistical Education Round Table
Conference, Spain.
Bloom B. S. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives, Handbook I: The cognitive domain. New York: David McKay Co Inc.
Bright, G.W. and Friel, S.N. (1998). Graphical representations: Helping students interpret data. In Lajoire, S. P. (Ed.), Reflections
on statistics: Learning, teaching, and assessment in Grades K-12 (pp. 63-88). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Broers, N.J. and Imbos, T. (2005). Charting and manipulating propositions as methods to promote self-explanation in the study of
statistics. Learning and Instruction, 15, 517-538.
Burrill, G. and Camden, M. (2005). Curricular development in statistics education: International Association for Statistical
Education 2004 Roundtable. Voolburg, The Netherlands: International Statiistical Institute.
Callingham, R.A. (1997). Teachers’ multimodal functioning in relation to the concept of average. Mathematics Education
Research Journal, 9(2), 205-224.
Chatzivasileiou, E., Michalis, I. and Tsaliki, C. (2010). Elementary school students’ understanding of concept of arithmetic mean.
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS-8). July 11-16. Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Clark, J.M., Kraut, G., Mathews, D. & Wimbish, J. (2007). The “fundamental theorem” of statistics: Classifying student
understanding of basic statistical concepts. Retrieved on 20 March, 2012, from
http://www1.hollins.edu/faculty/clarkjm/stat2c.pdf
Cohen, S., Smith, G., Chechile, R.A., Burns, G. and Tsai, F. (1996). Identifying impediments to learning probability and
statistics. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 21(1), 35 –54.
Cooper, L.L. and Shore, F.S. (2008). Students’ misconceptions in interpreting center and variability of data represented via
histograms and stem-and-leaf plots. Journal of Statistics Education, 16(2).
delMas, R.C., Garfield, J. and Ooms, A. (2005). Using assessment items to study students’difficulty reading and interpreting
graphical representations of distribution. In Makar, K. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Fourth International Research Forum on
Statistical Reasoning, Literacy, and Reasoning. Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland.
Foo, K-K. and Idris, N. (2010). A comparative study on statistics competency level using TIMSS data: Are we doing enough?
Journal of Mathematics Education, 3(2), 126-138.
Garfield, J.B. and Ben-Zvi, D. (2008). Developing students’ statistical reasoning: Connecting research and teaching practice.
Springer.
Garfield, J. and Chance, B. (2000). Assessment in statistics education: Issues and challenges. Mathematical Thinking and
Learning, 2(1&2), 99-125.
Groth, R.E. (2003). Development of a high school statistical thinking framework. Doctor Philosophy, Illinois State University.
Groth, R. and Bergner, J. (2005). Preservice elementary school teachers’ metaphors for the concept of statistical sample.
Statistics Education Research Journal, 4(2), 27-42.
Huck, S.W. (2009). Statistical misconceptions. New York: Psychology Press, Taylor & Francis.
Konold, C. and Pollastek, A. (2002). Data analysis as the search for signals in noisy processes. Journal for Research in
Mathematics Education, 33(4), 259-289.
Konold, C. and Pollastek, A. (2004). Conceptualizing an average as a stable feature of a noisy process. In Ben-Zvi, D. &
Garfield, J. (Eds.), The challenge of developing statistical literacy, reasoning, and thinking (pp. 169-199). The Netherlands:
Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Lee, C. and Meletiou-Mavrotheris, M. (2003). Some difficulties of learning histograms in introductory statistics. Joint Statistical
Meetings – Section on Statistical Education. Retrieved on 17 October, 2011, from http://www.statlit.org/PDF/2003LeeASA.pdf
Meletiou, M. and Lee, C. (2002). Student understanding of histograms: A stumbling stone to development of intuitions about
variation. The Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS-6). July 7-12. Cape Town, South
Afrika.
Mevarech, Z.R. (1983). A deep structure model of students’ statistical misconceptions. Educational Studies in Mathematics,
14(4), 415-429.
Mokros, J. and Russell, S.J. (1995). Children’s concepts of average and representativeness. Journal for Research in Mathematics
Education, 26, 20-39. 30
Olani, A., Hoekstra, R., Harskamp, E. and van der Werf, G. (2011). Statistical reasoning ability, self-efficacy, and value beliefs in
a reform based university statistics course. Electronic Journal of Research in Educational Psychology, 9(1), 49-72.
Sirvik, M. and Kmetic, S. (2010). Understanding of arithmetic mean. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on
Teaching Statistics (ICOTS-8). July 11-16. Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Strauss, S. and Bichler, E. (1988). The development of children’s concept of the arithmetic average. Journal for Research in
Mathematics Education, 19(1), 64-80.
Tempelaar, D.T., Gijselaers, W.H. and van der Loeff, S.S. (2006). Puzzles in statistical reasoning. Journal of Statistics
Education, 14(1). Retrieved on 15 March, 2012, from http://www.amstat.org/publications/jse/v14n1/tempelaar.html

99 to the terms at: http://scitation.aip.org/termsconditions. Downloaded to IP:

This article is copyrighted as indicated in the article. Reuse of AIP content is subject
103.1.71.118 On: Thu, 05 Feb 2015 11:37:23
 Watson, J.M. and Moritz, J.B. (2000). The longitudinal development of understanding of average. Mathematical Thinking and
Learning, 2(1&2), 11-50.Zawojewski, J.S. and Shaughnessy, J.M. (2000). Mean and median: Are they really so easy?
Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, 5(7), 436-440.

100 to the terms at: http://scitation.aip.org/termsconditions. Downloaded to IP:

This article is copyrighted as indicated in the article. Reuse of AIP content is subject
103.1.71.118 On: Thu, 05 Feb 2015 11:37:23
View publication stats