A Study on Teaching Graphs using Excel

Abstract

he purpose of analyzing data statistically is to forecast the future by having a clear grasp of the comprehensive features of the whole data. The comprehensive features of the data can be checked by focusing on the distribution and the concentration of the data and how they change as time goes by. One of the most useful measures to understand the comprehensive features of a data is the graph. Graphs are crucial tools in statistical investigations, because they can provide an overview of the whole data and highlight specific characteristics that are not visible from the numbers (Bakker, A., 2004; Bright, G.W. & Friel, S.N., 2004). In the statistics area of elementary mathematics program of the 7th Educational Program suggests the following 3 objectives related to teaching graphs. First, you should teach students to recognize the convenience of graphs as a data organizing tool. Second, you should teach students to choose the most suitable graph according to the features of the data. Third, you should teach students to grasp the features of the data through graphs(Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development, 1997). Such objectives reflect most of the objectives of Statistics Education as suggested by Ben-Zvi, D (2004), Gravemeijer, K.P.E (2004). However, it's necessary to check how much of those objectives are being implemented in school textbooks. The first objective of this study is to grasp how much the objectives are being implemented in school textbooks, what kinds of measures are being used and what kinds of improvements are needed. According to Arganbright, D. (2004) and Masalski, W.J. (1990), etc,

Excel enables us to describe data in table easily using graphs by providing chart drawing function. That is, it helps in analyzing the data by enabling us to present data with various graphs. This is a very important educational approach because it helps students recognize the convenience of graphs, choose the most suitable graph and understand the features of data which are the objective of statistics education. Also, it is a very useful measure because it enables us to overcome the limit of present school textbooks. The 2nd objective of this study is to suggest the teaching method in using Excel concretely by relating it to current school mathematics textbooks. Lastly the recognition of current teachers about using Excel to teach graphs should be examined. The necessity and meaning of the technology recognized by current teachers should be checked after comparing the differences between current teaching method and the teaching method that introduced the technology in terms of contents elements, the level of difficulty, and objective.