The millennium development goals, national statistical offices, the international statistical literacy project and statistical literacy in schools

Issue title: StatisticsLiteracy

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Sanchez, Juana | Forbes, Sharleen | Campos, Pedro | Giacche, Paola | Townsend, Mary | Mooney, Gai | Helenius, Reija

Affiliations: University of California Los Angeles, UCLA Department of Statistics, 8125 Math Sciences Building, Box 951554, Los Angeles, CA, USA | Statistical Education and Research Statistics, P.O. Box 2922 The Boulevard, Harbour Quays, Wellington 6140 New Zealand, New Zealand | LIAAD INESC Porto and Statistics Portugal – Methodology and Information, Systems Department R. Vilar, 235 piso 10, Porto, Portugal | Italian National Institute of Statistics, Via Cesare Balbo, 16 00184 Rome, Italy | Statistics Canada 150 Tunney's Pasture Parkway Ottawa, Ontario Canada K1A 0T6, Education Outreach/Statistics Canada/Statistique, Canada | Education Services ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics), 485 Latrobe Street, Melbourne Victoria, 3000, Victoria | Statistics Finland, Post Box 3 C, FI-00022 Statistics Finland, Finland

Note: [] Corresponding author: University of California Los Angeles, UCLA Department of Statistics, 8125 Math Sciences Building, Box 951554, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1554, USA. Tel.: +1 310 825 1318; Fax: +1 310 206 5658; E-mail: jsanchez@stat.ucla.edu

Abstract: Reaching the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and the necessary statistical literacy for citizens' understanding of what they entail requires that National Statistical Offices (NSOs) become more involved in the promotion of statistical literacy in cooperation with national statistical societies, international organizations like IASE and ISLP and national education institutions. All these stakeholders share an interest in the promotion of statistical literacy in schools yet for rather different reasons. Sharing the different skills that each possesses could have benefits for the long term goals of each stakeholder, could help improve school curricula, contribute to the debate on what constitutes statistical literacy and what is the best way to help citizens achieve it, and make the path to evidence based decision making easier. In this paper we present examples of what National Statistics Offices can and can not do regarding the promotion of statistical literacy in schools. We illustrate the common and singular aspects of their programs for schools and discuss how they follow the current trends in statistics education while helping the National Statistics Office's goal of promoting their statistics products and creating more users of official statistics. The work of the International Statistical Literacy Project (ISLP) is discussed in the context of drawing together stakeholders and resources.

Keywords: National statistical offices, statistical literacy, school curriculum, lesson plans, data handling, metadata, millennium goals, competitions

DOI: 10.3233/SJI-2011-0736

Journal: Statistical Journal of the IAOS, vol. 27, no. 3-4, pp. 157-171, 2011