The idea of variation is a foundation of statistical reasoning, and many curriculum documents, including the "Australian Curriculum", include variation in the learning required for the primary years. In this paper, we consider the design of activities that can exemplify the idea of variation for young students and investigate how…

As an extension to an activity introducing Year 5 students to the practice of statistics, the software "TinkerPlots" made it possible to collect repeated random samples from a finite population to informally explore students' capacity to begin reasoning with a distribution of sample statistics. This article provides background for the…

This study considers the evolving influence of variation and expectation on the development of school students' appreciation of distribution as displayed in their construction of graphical representations of data sets. Three interview protocols are employed, presenting different contexts within which 109 students, ranging in age from 6 to 15…

A magazine article is shown to contain material that could lead to discussions of several topics in mathematics. The article and the related mathematics are discussed in detail. (MP)

Describes an activity which allows students with a range of abilities to become involved in data analysis and informal inference while working in self-selected small group environments. Enables students to explore their own resources for asking questions. (DDR)