Teaching first-year statistics students with COVID-19 real-world data: Graphs

Abstract

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what about graphs? Although graphs have the potential to bring data to life, numerous studies show that learners struggle with graphical comprehension. Furthermore, many textbook examples on graphs are boring and appear meaningless to students. Students want to know more about something which is interesting, meaningful, and worth knowing, in other words, something relevant. With the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in December 2019, COVID-19 is dominating the news worldwide, and the internet is flooded with visual presentations about the virus. To make statistics more fascinating and exciting, relevant and real-world data such as these can be used in the classroom to stimulate the learning of important statistical concepts such as graphs. Curcio's three levels of graphical comprehension were used as a framework in this study, while the importance of developing a global view on distributions was also emphasized.