Implementing The Standards: Statistics and Probability

Abstract

Statistics—the collection, organization, and interpretation of data; the art and science of an-alyzing information—was until the late 1960s the domain of those gifted in mathematics or those few who needed limited knowledge to make inferences within their chosen field. The school curriculum furnished little background for the (“science of numbers.” Statistics was a vast array of symbols, formulas, and rules that seemed to have little relationship to reality. During the 1960s, a combination of circumstances indicated a need to change the role of statistics in society: the development of computers with the capacity to create, store, and analyze large quantities of data; the formation of new, simple, and effective data-analysis techniques; and the occurrence of rapid changes in personal and working environments of society.