Interpreting histograms
Recently Educational Research Review published the article 'Conceptual difficulties when interpreting histograms: A review' by Lonneke Boels, Arthur Bakker, Wim Van Dooren and Paul Drijvers. Histograms are often misinterpreted since people do not know exactly what kind of data are being represented and how these are distributed. The advice to both researchers and teachers is to enable students to understand the two statistical concepts of 'data' and 'distribution', instead of investigating and addressing each misinterpretation separately.
The core of the article is summarised in two video abstracts, both lasting five minutes:
Want to know more?
- Watch a seminar to discuss the results of this review and a follow-up study and how these are used in an initial design of tasks for students (45 minutes).
- Read the article 'Conceptual difficulties when interpreting histograms: A review'.
From case-value plot to histogram - an app for teachers, lecturers and researchers
Many students confuse a histogram with other graphs with bars. In the article Conceptual difficulties when interpreting histograms: A review we made it clear that it is possible to turn a case-value plot (two statistical variables) into a histogram (one statistical variable). The graphs that are used in the article can now be used by teachers, lecturers and researchers. Go to this app:
https://utrecht-university.shinyapps.io/case-value-plot-to-histogram-en/
You can either use the data we used in the article or upload your own data. The (R-)code for this app is made by Kees van Eijden of Utrecht University.