MMSD Mathematics Content Standards for Statistics and Probability
Introduction | Grade 6 | Grade 7 | Grade 8
Wisconsin’s Model Academic Standards (WMAS) Standard E: Data Analysis and Probability, 1998 (p. 12)
Students in Wisconsin will use data collection and analysis, statistics and probability in problem-solving situations, employing technology where appropriate.
Dramatic advances in technology have launched the world into the Information Age, when data are used to describe past events or predict future events. Whether in the business place or in the home, as producers or consumers of information, citizens need to be well versed in the concepts and procedures of data analysis in order to make informed decisions.
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (PSSM) Data Analysis and Probability, 2000 (pp. 248-255)
Instructional programs from pre-kindergarten through grade 12 should enable all students to
Prior to the middle grades, students should have had experiences collecting, organizing, and representing sets of data. They should be facile both with representational tools (such as tables, line plots, bar graphs, and line graphs) and with measures of center and spread (such as median, mode, and range). They should have had experience in using some methods of analyzing information and answering questions, typically about a single population.
In grades 6-8, teachers should build on this base of experience to help students answer more complex questions, such as those concerning relationships among populations or samples and those about relationships between two variables within one population or sample. Toward this end, new representations should be added to the students’ repertoire. Box plots, for example, allow students to compare two or more samples, such as the heights of students in two different classes. Scatter plots allow students to study related pairs of characteristics in one sample, such as height versus arm span among students in one class. In addition, students can use and further develop their emerging understanding of proportionality in various aspects of their study of data and statistics.