Visualizing Statistical Relationships

这个项目解决了数据素养作为生活在民主社会中的一项基本技能的日益重要的问题，以及几乎没有人对数据有坚实的理解这一令人沮丧的事实。它通过研究先进的可视化工具如何影响教师和学生对几个关键统计概念的理解来满足这一需求。该项目关注人们如何理解数据的分布，他们如何比较两组数据，以及他们如何思考协变；它考察了强大的可视化工具如何促进这些概念的学习。作为教育软件开发商和教育研究人员之间的合作，该项目利用了两个小组的专业知识，以便1)建立一个研究基础，阐明统计协方差领域的教/学过程；2)开发一套最好地支持统计学习的统计教育工具的设计原则；3)在教育研究中使用商业软件设计师的大部分未开发的设计专长；以及4)利用国家科学基金会在教育软件开发方面的投资。最终目标是加快统计教育研究和软件的发展，如果没有这种合作，这是不可能的。

This project addresses the growing importance of data literacy as a fundamental skill for living in a democratic society and the disheartening fact that few people have a solid understanding of data. It addresses this need by studying how advanced visualization tools can affect teachers' and students' develop understanding of several crucial statistical concepts. The project focuses on how people understand distributions of data, how they compare two groups of data, and how they think about convariation; it examines the ways in which powerful visualization tools can facilitate the learning of these concepts. As a collaboration betwee educational software developers and educational researchers, the project takes advantage of the expertise of both groups in order to 1) develop a research foundation that elucidates teaching/learning processes in the area of statistical covariation; 2) develop a set of design principles for statistical education tools that best support statistical learning; 3) use the largely untapped design expertise of commercial software designers in educational research; and 4) leverage NSF's investment in educational software development. The ultimate goal is to accelerate the development of both statistical education research and software in ways that would be impossible without such a collaboration.