Wahanga | Chapter 2
Tracing the threads of chance: Historical insights for teaching probability
by Sibel Kazak and Robin Averill
Wahanga | Chapter 7 [Note: DRAFT]
Digital tools: Harnessing technology for probability explorations and analysis Y1-11
by Chris Wild
It’s almost time to go on holiday and escape from hearing certain words every day!! But before you go, in our last newsletter of 2025, we thought we’d share the word of the year… which is actually a number (well, said as two numbers)…
According to CensusAtSchool data, it’s well and truly 67!
Check out our updated visualisation
Dictionary.com has also named 67 as word of the year.
However, the Oxford English Dictionary gave rage bait the honours.
Join us for a day focused on leveraging technology to enhance statistics teaching.
Date
December 5, 2025
Location
University of Auckland City Campus.
Building 201, 10 Symonds Street. (Note: new venue)
Fee
$180 + GST (AMA members)
$200 + GST (Non-members)
Deadline
Registrations close December 3.
Brought to you by The University of Auckland Department of Statistics in collaboration with the Auckland Mathematics Association.
Many of you will be familiar with CODAP (Common Online Data Analysis Platform). You may have attended one of the many sessions around the country or as part of the AMAonline series.
In the book Statistical Investigations | Te Tūhuratanga Tauanga (Arnold, 2022, p. 221), there is some background about CODAP, some of which is shared here.
CODAP is free open source software for data analysis built for use in schools. With CODAP, you can explore, visualize, and learn from data in any content area. Our mission is to make data literacy accessible for all students. CODAP is easy to use and runs in your web browser. CODAP is (and always will be) free. Share your data with others and bring it to life!
CODAP is created and maintained by The Concord Consortium. In New Zealand, CODAP has been used successfully with students from Year 4 onwards. CODAP has been designed to be accessible to younger students, allowing novice users to visualise data quickly and fluidly.
CODAP supports developing statistical concepts as well as doing statistical analysis. In CODAP, graphs are dynamically linked; highlighting data points in one graph highlights the same cases in all other graphs, tables, and maps.
Registrations are open! Statistics Teachers’ Day 2025
Join us for a day focused on leveraging technology to enhance statistics teaching.
Date
December 5, 2025
Location
University of Auckland City Campus.
Building 201, 10 Symonds Street. (Note: new venue)
Fee
$180 + GST (AMA members)
$200 + GST (Non-members)
Deadline
Registrations close December 3.
Brought to you by The University of Auckland Department of Statistics in collaboration with the Auckland Mathematics Association.
Last week, we wrote to reassure you that the PPDAC cycle is still a key part of teaching and learning statistics in New Zealand classrooms. It remains the glue that holds it all together.
We covered what this means in practice for Year 3 level statements. This week, we’re looking at Year 9.
When planning to teach statistics in Year 9, you will need to consider the Year 9 level statements. In the example below, we show how they connect with the PPDAC cycle to support the great work teachers are already doing in teaching statistics in high schools.
Remember: The curriculum statements cover what students need to know, not how to teach them.
Curriculum document statements:
OUR COMMENTARY
These curriculum statements clearly indicate that students are undertaking statistical investigations. Teaching and learning can come from a range of summary, comparison, relationship, and time series investigations.
We have clarified that the statistical question discussed in the third bullet point is the investigative question. Other statistical questions include survey or data collection questions, analysis questions, and interrogative questions. The investigative question is the statistical question we want to answer using data.
Students are working with multivariate datasets, and the focus is on observational studies. Students will be planning to collect primary data and find out about secondary data collected by someone else in order to pose and answer investigative questions.
In this phase of the investigation, students should be making initial conjectures or assertions about what they expect to find, not explicitly stated here, but referenced in the conclusion section “Comparing findings to initial conjectures or assertions and existing knowledge”.
Curriculum document statements:
OUR COMMENTARY
These curriculum statements indicate that students are planning to collect data, and are collecting data. Ideally, the dataset is multivariate, so not just one variable, and the dataset should have at least one categorical variable and one numerical variable. To explore time series and relationship investigative questions, students will need at least two categorical (relationship) and at least two numerical (relationship and time series, one of which is time). We strongly recommend working with larger multivariate datasets, as they provide students with more individual choice about which variables they will investigate.
The statements also indicate that students are working with secondary data, such as the data that is available on CensusAtSchool and many other data repositories (see the Data Gems document on CensusAtSchool for a longer list, and teachers can also access the list in the book Statistical investigations | Te tūhuratanga tauanga Chapter 4 – sourcing datasets pp 162-167). It is good to remember that the PPDAC cycle can start at any point, and with secondary data, often the investigation starts with the data, interrogating the original investigator’s “plan” before posing investigative questions for exploration.
Figure 4.10. The statistical enquiry cycle for provided datasets (Arnold, 2022, p.159)
Curriculum document statements:
These statements are across Year 9 & 10:
These statements are specifically for Year 9:
OUR COMMENTARY
These curriculum statements could be read as business as usual for the analysis we do for our given statistical investigation, or the great stuff you already do, except that what is not explicitly stated is the description of data visualisations, though in the conclusion section, it does say to communicate findings… so this implies that description is needed.
There are lots of ideas about describing distributions in the book Statistical investigations | Te tūhuratanga tauanga (Chapter 5 Analysis pp 291-336), and some of the information is shared here.
Depending on how your school approaches statistics currently, you might not explicitly look at box plots until Year 10, and while the “CALCULATION” of the five-number summary is listed in Year 9, schools may take a more flexible view on the purpose of finding this information. Also, be aware that the language is not the language we would normally use in New Zealand. We know Q1 is the lower quartile, and Q3 is the upper quartile. It is good for students to be aware of the different terms, work with what is familiar, and makes sense.
In Year 9, we are building foundational ideas, the building blocks, if you like, for concepts such as working with samples rather than the whole group and making the call in comparison situations, which they learn about in Year 10.
Curriculum document statements:
OUR COMMENTARY
These curriculum statements align with what you would expect to be happening in the conclusion phase of the PPDAC cycle.
As mathematics and statistics departments and faculties, you have the opportunity to ensure that statistics teaching and learning continue to align with best practice and to make decisions about which types of investigations (summary, comparison, relationship, time series) and data collection/sourcing focus (primary, secondary) you want to take for each year.
Pip has worked with three Auckland High Schools to develop activities for teaching statistics at Year 9. There are draft materials with a focus on summary investigations and primary data here, and in progress a series of lessons focusing on relationship investigations for Year 9. This is a deliberate decision and would be backed up with a Year 10 unit focusing on comparison and time series investigations, with a focus on using secondary data.
We’ve had many emails from concerned teachers asking whether the PPDAC statistical enquiry cycle has been removed from the curriculum.
There is no reference to the statistical enquiry cycle in What you told us and how we responded | Mathematics and Statistics Years 9-10, however, in What’s New in Mathematics and Statistics 0-8 (page 2), it says:
“Changes to the Statistics and Probability strands have been made. Statistics and probability are written with a different focus as the statistical enquiry cycle is no longer used as the main structure for the strands [in the curriculum statements]. In most year groups, you will see a reduction in the amount to teach for these strands; the probability strand now begins at year 5.”
Note: Bold underline is our emphasis, and the highlighted statement (our statement) is clarifying where the statistical enquiry cycle is no longer used as the main structure.
To reassure you that the statistical enquiry cycle underpins good statistics teaching and learning have a look at this example using the Year 3 level statements, rearranged to show how you would still use the PPDAC cycle in your teaching and learning.
Next week, we will share what this might look like for Year 9.
Curriculum document statements:
OUR COMMENTARY
These curriculum statements indicate firstly that students are working to answer an investigative question, the investigative question on lost teeth connects to the activity Y2 Our Lost Teeth – PPDAC cycle on CensusAtSchool. We have written it for Year 2, but it can be adapted for Year 3 students as well.
The second thing that these statements show us is that in Year 3 students are moving to using numerical data as well.
Curriculum document statements:
OUR COMMENTARY
These curriculum statements clearly show that students are collecting primary data, both categorical and numerical. Behind the scenes, teachers will be supporting students to plan to collect the data, even though this is not specifically mentioned. The Year 3 statistics plan on CensusAtSchool connects you to good teaching and learning activities on Tāhūrangi and CensusAtSchool that are at a level appropriate for Year 3 students. Parties and favourites is a good model for ideas about planning for data collection.
Curriculum document statements:
OUR COMMENTARY
These curriculum statements, particularly the top two, clearly speak to “doing” the analysis as we would using the PPDAC cycle. There are also some good ideas in the current curriculum teaching considerations – keep this doc as an extra resource.
Teaching considerations for analysis Years 1-3 – 2024 curriculum
Curriculum document statements:
OUR COMMENTARY
These curriculum statements also speak to the PPDAC cycle, and the need to answer our original investigative question. The statistical enquiry process allows students to engage in a statistical problem solving process to find out about a situation. By undertaking a statistical enquiry students end up with new knowledge about the world, and potentially more investigative questions.
With the school year rapidly coming to an end (!), now is a great time to take part in CensusAtSchool with your classes.
It’s not too late to register.
If you have any questions, please email us.
Thanks to Joanna Wheway, Principal of Waikino School, for sending in these lovely photos of tamariki taking part earlier this year.
Today is World Statistics Day!
The UN is running a 24-hour webinar marathon that you can tune into for free – it’s starting at 1PM today (Monday). The theme this year is “Driving change with quality statistics and data for everyone”.
There has been a lot of voting going on! Did you know that the Kārearea (New Zealand falcon) has recently been named New Zealand Bird of the Year?
Earlier, the “Chook Tree” was named New Zealand Tree of the Year, and the Velvet Worm was named New Zealand Bug of the Year.
Statistics Teachers’ Day is happening on Friday 5 December at the University of Auckland. This year’s theme is “Probably, Possibly, Potentially: Technology for Teaching”. Registrations for the day will open in November.
We’re looking for speakers to share practical ideas and classroom experiences on using technology to teach statistics. If you’ve got something to contribute, we’d love to hear from you!
Develop your leadership in Mathematics and Statistics teaching! Five prestigious Kalman Teacher Fellowships, each valued at $6000, are available for Auckland-region primary, intermediate, and secondary teachers. Study postgraduate mathematics or statistics education courses at the University of Auckland and receive up to $2000 for personal use, plus up to $4000 towards your course fees. Apply before 5 pm October 31.
