Jay Warner wrote:
>Trusting that Eugene or someone in Massachusetts can respond, I ask,
>
>Are box and whisker plots included in the material that _must_ be taught
>in the
>K-12 curriculum? I believe a previous post pointed out that older intro stat
>books, including those listed as suitable for MCAS preparation, do not
>include the
>box and whisker plots explanation as a subject.
>
>If it is not included in those recommended texts, then MCAS developers
>have a
>serious problem on their hands - the 'standards' they evaluate every
>student for
>are not the ones they said would be used. Before I, or anyone else,
>takes this
>line of thinking any further, I'd like to have some background facts.
>Fill me in,
>form my vantage point in the midwest?
>
>Jay
Yes. Great question. The box and whisker plot is listed as a requirement of
the 5th-6th, 7th-8th, and 9th-10th grade curriculum frameworks, which are
available on the web:
http://www.doe.mass.edu/frameworks/current.html
This curriculum framework includes a glossary showing a box and whisker plot.
And conveniently, for MA textbook purchasers, the figure is taken directly from
the Harcourt Brace K-12 textbook page:
http://www.hbschool.com/glossary/math/glossary8.html
I hope that Harcourt Brace sales rep earned a bonus for that plug!
Unfortunately, for both MCAS and Harcourt Brace, the description given in their
glossary is an inadequate description of the boxplot It doesn't conform to the
boxplot as proposed by Tukey and used in every statistical package.
Jay, you've solved a riddle for me. I went through my daughter's 5th grade
math book this spring and was intrigued that it had a picture of a boxplot (but
not properly described). Now I know why.
The thing I object to about the boxplot question (question 39 in the 2001 10th
grade MCAS) is that doesn't test a basic principle of probability or
statistics. A Feller or Fisher could not be assured of getting Question 39
correct because it hinges on a definition of the boxplot which is just one of
many ways of plotting data. A student with a Harcourt-Brace text would stand a
better chance of getting the question correct than one without a Harcourt-Brace
text. The Harcourt-Brace description of the boxplot, which is now being taught
to MA students, isn't a proper boxplot (maybe the Harcourt-Brace K-12 boxplot
is different from the Tukey boxplot), becuase it doesn't properly plot outliers
and extreme outliers.
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