Conceptions of Statistics
This construct describes changing conceptions of the meaning and uses of statistics. It reflects the perspective that statistics are summary measures of characteristics of data that are developed to answer research questions. It is important that students come to see the functions of statistics as ways to characterize characteristics of distributions (i.e., central tendency and spread) and not merely as an obligatory procedural step in working with data. As students learn more about statistics, they begin to understand that statistics vary from sample to sample, and that statistics can describe characteristics of sampling distributions as well as samples.