Introducing Children to Modeling Variability

Abstract

This chapter synthesizes diverse research investigating the potential of inducting elementary grade children into the statistical practice of modeling variability in light of uncertainty. In doing so, we take a genetic perspective toward the development of knowledge, attempting to locate productive seeds of understandings of variability that can be cultivated during instruction in ways that expand students' grasp of different aspects and sources of variability. To balance the complexity and tractability of this enterprise, we focus on a framework we refer to as data modeling. This framework suggests the inadvisability of piecewise approaches focusing narrowly on, for instance, computation of statistics, in favor of more systematic and cohesive involvement of children in practices of inquiring, visualizing, and measuring variability in service of informal inference. Modeling variability paves the way for children in the upper elementary grades to make informal inferences in light of probability structures. All of these practices can be elaborated and even transformed with new generations of digital technologies.