Malaysian students' misconceptions about measures of central tendency: An error analysis

Abstract

Earlier studies revealed that students encountered difficulties in understanding the concept of measures of central tendency. However, there is negligible empirical support concerning this problem in Malaysian context. Thus, the purpose of this study is to identify misconceptions held by tenth grade students from Malaysian secondary schools regarding measures of central tendency. The instrument used was a statistical reasoning test. It was administered to 412 tenth grade students from nine different schools. Overall, the results demonstrated that tenth grade students held considerable misconceptions about measures of central tendency. Interestingly, some misconceptions were new which had not been identified in previous research. This study provides implications for instructors and researchers planning learning goals as well as designing instructional activities and assessments for future studies.