Abstract
This study investigated thirty-two Year 9 secondary school students’ (15 year olds) reasoning about data tables of large-scale data. Eight groups of four students, drawn from six classes, participated in a workshop that examined the components of population change for EU and candidate countries, namely natural increase of population, net overseas migration for Europe and their country, and total population growth. Students investigated trends in real data displayed in tables, and responded to a set of reflective questions. Analysis of the reasoning used by the students revealed four levels of data-table comprehension—reading the data, reading within the data, reading beyond the data, and reading behind the data—similar to the levels described for students working with smaller data sets.
Highlights
Developments enabled by novel technologies have completely altered the ways that citizens can access data
This study investigated thirty-two Year 9 secondary school students‘ (15 year olds) reasoning about data tables of large-scale data
Competent use of large-scale data predominantly requires comprehension of tables and other visual representations of statistical data, since these are routinely used in daily life and in the workplace to communicate information
Summary
Developments enabled by novel technologies have completely altered the ways that citizens can access data. Three emerging trends have impacted this revolution in our increasingly data-driven society These trends include: 1) the increasing use of large-scale databases within the open data movement, 2) the growing use of big data, and 3) novel ways of visualising data. The open data movement supports the availability of high quality data sets collected by national statistics offices and non-government organisations for a specific purpose. These data are characterised by several features: the data are multivariate, consist of clearly defined measures, the population is known, and the data generation and presentation have been subjected to extensive scrutiny. The revolution of the open data movement has had significant success in recent years in persuading major data providers, such as Eurostat and national statistics offices, to give citizens access to huge databases in order to create new variables, and explore new relationships
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