and

characteristics of individuals rather than the group, and ‘see the trees rather than the forest’. How can teachers in upper primary and early high school teach students to organise large sets of data with widely varying values into groups, and to represent the resulting grouped data appropriately in a histogram? How can we choose data sets that allow integration of different topics in the mathematics curriculum? What involvement can students have in the data collection? These are questions that were addressed in a ‘teaching experiment ’ with two year 7 classes in two different Queensland schools over a three-week period. (Year 7 is the final year of primary school in Queensland). Data collection One very effective and efficient way of obtaining a reasonably sized data set is to have students conduct a survey within their own class or across a number of classes. A strategy that worked well in introducing year 7 students to surveys was to supply each student with a data sheet containing the following four questions: (a) Your height in cm, (b) Your horizontal reach in cm (arms outstretched), (c) Your estimate of the number of countries in the world