Statistics and Probability

In this chapter, the authors emphasise the importance of extensive experiences for promoting probabilistic reasoning and statistical literacy. Contemporary theorists and educationalists argue that students need to enter this world able to make sense of the multifarious forms of information presented to them. A renewed focus on statistics and probability in the Australian curriculum underscores how an understanding of chance and data is the linchpin of effective survival in the world beyond school. Much of the literature on critical numeracy focuses on the use and interpretation of statistics. However, students need to work further with such data sets to explore questions of why such outcomes occur, and to look at what can be done to challenge some of the important issues that have traditionally been masked through statistics. In relation to probabilistic reasoning, the big ideas are 'chance variation, randomness, independence (and their complementary elements stability, regularity and co-occurrence)'.