Drawing conclusion from statistics

What is the meaning of a mean of 14, a mode of 8 and a median of 7? Children calculate these numbers all the time. They get marks for getting the right numbers, but what do they mean? It’s easy for a child to see that when they add 5 apples to a bowl already containing 3 apples what the purpose of the calculation is. Similarly with calculation of money where they start with a pound and spend 35 pence, they can see the point of knowing how much money they have left. But what conclusion can be drawn from knowing the 3 numbers shown at the start of this blog? Well, sometimes a conclusion can be drawn from these 3 numbers. However, on other occasions these 3 numbers perhaps mean nothing much without further information, such as the number of samples from which these averages were calculated, and the range of these samples. The point is that interpreting statistics is a holistic activity. Numbers have to be looked at in conjunction with each other. Children are not used to that in maths, they are used to a single numerical answer. This discrepancy between the type of thinking needed for the maths that children are used to and that encountered with statistics causes them enormous difficulties. Pupils who cannot easily adapt their thinking are likely to respond by not attempting to understand what the statistics are there to explain, and take refuge in just producing the number required of them, without understanding. They perform the necessary calculations and get right answers but miss the point of the exercise. At Puppet Maths, we teach statistics using life like scenarios. The puppets allow us to create situations where statistics can be put to use and conclusions drawn. We can animate real problems that make statistics relevant and so understandable.