Reasoning About Distribution: A complex process

Abstract

We are very pleased to introduce this special issue of the Statistics Education Research Journal (SERJ) on Reasoning about Distribution, which presents research at the forefront of building conceptual foundations for statistics education. According to Moore (1990, p. 136) statistical thinking is an "independent and fundamental intellectual method that deserves attention in the school curriculum." Equally he could have stated that statistical thinking deserves attention by research. He also hoped that "in the future pupils will bring away from their schooling a structure of thought that whispers, 'Variation matters ... Why not draw a graph?'" (Moore, 1991, p. 426). With considerable foresight Moore not only encapsulated the building blocks for statistical thinking but also two deep research questions with which statistics education researchers are currently grappling: How do students actually reason about variability and distribution? How do these two types of reasoning develop?