I've been hearing from some of our parents that sixth graders are beginning exposure to statistics here in the area. That's not the easiest area of math to put into perspective in and of itself, much more when the math prerequisites are in need of support.
The good news is that, as with everything else in math, if we use language that makes sense to kids, they will get it and they will be confident and propel themselves onward and upward.
For example, when explaining average and standard deviation, I was always able to understand real-world examples much better than the book terminology...like darts being thrown at a dartboard.
On the diagram, the yellow dots on the board are very close to each other. This means we threw the darts more consistently. We have a low variability (standard deviation). But we are way off of the bull’s eye. We throw with precision, but we have work to do to get closer to the center (we are not accurate).
Since the red dots are very far apart from each other, but hit the bull’s eye a couple of times, we average out to be much closer to the center. Accurate is not really accurate though, since we need to get more consistent in throwing motion to improve our consistency.
When we pull it all together, we see our blue dots consistent and accurate. The text book would say we have a low mean distance from the bull's eye and we have a very low standard deviation. We just know that our throws are very close to each other and we have come very close to the target.
Try doing a real activity like the dartboard with the kids and they'll understand things so much better. I know I did.
-Carlo
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