An Investigation Of The Basic Ideas Of Statistical Measures In The High School

Author

James Dilworth Williams, Prairie View A & M College

Date of Award

8-1962

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Degree Discipline

Mathematics

Abstract

THE PROBLEM AND EXPLANATIONS OF TERMS USED

Historically, statistical theory has had a long and slow development and is the result of the work of many people in many countries working in many different fields. Recently great advances have been made in the development of mathematical statistics and its application. It is the idea of many that the applications are not in their simplest forms."

THE PROBLEM

Statement of the problem. The purpose of this study was (l) to break down the statistical applications in a more simple form to enable high school students to become more familiar and interested, and give them a better view of statistics; (2) to connect the basic ideas of sets in the measures of central tendencies.

The results of a survey of high schools in Texas which was made by the writer during the school year 1960-1961 indicate that the non-appearance of statistics at the high school level probably is due to several factors: (l) statistical language is too difficult, not only for the student but ofttimes also for the teacher, (2) lack of meaningful statistical experiences, (3) lack of teachers of statistics at this level, (4) traditionally, statistics is associated with graduate school. A copy of this survey is on file in the Department of Mathematics, Prairie View A & M College, Prairie View, Texas.

Importance of the study. Statistics represent a vast expanding field of applied mathematics. It is constantly finding wider use in such fields as engineering, business, medicine, education, and agriculture.2 In this study an attempt was made to employ simple tendencies and using constructions which high school students would become interested. 2

EXPLANATION OF TERMS USED

Histogram. A histogram is a vertical bar graph, with no space between bars, having class boundaries as points on the horizontal axis and the frequencies as units on the vertical axis. The frequency corresponding to a class is represented by the height of a rectangle whose base is the class interval.3 i am going to construct a histogram for a 90-year period showing the seasonal rainfall in Austin, Texas.

Committee Chair/Advisor

Samuel Douglas

Committee Member

Israel E. Glover

Publisher

Prairie View A & M College

Rights

© 2021 Prairie View A & M University

Date of Digitization

4/13/2022

Contributing Institution

John B Coleman Library

City of Publication

Prairie View

MIME Type

Application/PDF

Recommended Citation

Williams, J. D. (1962). An Investigation Of The Basic Ideas Of Statistical Measures In The High School. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.pvamu.edu/pvamu-theses/1475