The Need to Reinforce the Teaching of Basic Descriptive Statistics Required in Reporting Quantitative Laboratory Results: Diagnose of Common Students’ Misconceptions

Abstract

Descriptive statistics involves summarizing and organizing data so that they can be easily understood. Even though these are basic and simple concepts, many applied science students have misconceptions about their use in applied experiments in the laboratory. Students usually receive limited or no training in how to understand the meaning of the results obtained from statistical calculations, which leads students, and often even researchers, to assume that statistics are just the ability to count and use formulas with an appropriate software. In this study, students were interviewed after doing an exercise devoted to calculating the descriptive statistics required for some experimental results obtained in the laboratory. This has allowed us to find out the most common misconceptions held by students and has helped to develop a methodology to reinforce descriptive statistics concepts within laboratory lessons, which has been demonstrated to be helpful for students to improve the required descriptive statistical skills in scientific degrees.