Why it's so hard to learn statistics

The purpose of maths is to help us understand what is happening in the world around us. It starts with the pupil learning arithmetic. This can easily be related to everyday life. The concept of what constitutes a “three” or a “five” is relatively easy to convey. Arithmetic is a precise discipline, and naturally emphasis that is put on accuracy when children learn it, however this is unhelpful when children come to learn statistics. Statistics have no precise “right” answers. The subject is all about getting an idea about what is going on. The metrics that are used in statistics only mean something once you’ve used them and “got a feel for them”. Before one has grasped the concepts one just doesn’t know what they mean. Learning statistics involves the pupil “getting their feet wet”, wading in and engaging with the subject before the pupil knows what it all means. This is hard for them to do when statistics is taught by a maths teacher in a maths lesson, because they’ve already been conditioned to think of maths as being all about precision, and nothing to do with gaining a gut feeling of what the data is “sort of” telling us. At Puppet Maths, because the maths is taught by puppets, who are not strict disciplinarians, pupils find it easier to accept the transition from the precision of arithmetic to the overall appreciation that is embodied in the study of statistics.