When working within a meaningful context quite young students are capable of working with sophisticated data. Year 3 students investigate thermal insulation and the transfer of heat in a STEM inquiry, developing skills in measuring temperature by conducting a statistical investigation, and using a stylised graph to interpret their data.

The fortunes of chance and data have fluctuated in the mathematics curriculum in Australia since their emergence in the National Statement in the early 1990s. Their appearance in Australia followed closely on similar moves in the United States. In both countries the topics, taken together, were given a section status equal to other areas of the…

Inference, or decision making, is seen in curriculum documents as the final step in a statistical investigation. For a formal statistical enquiry this may be associated with sophisticated tests involving probability distributions. For young students without the mathematical background to perform such tests, it is still possible to draw informal…