Acquisition of Notions of Statistical Variation by In-service Teachers

A study with six middle school teachers on the notion of variation in the task of prediction is hereby presented. The SOLO hierarchy in which notions like randomness, structure and variation are included is applied. Variation related activities used in this study arise from the questions used in research on statistical variation but were also adapted to include computer simulation. The notion of no singular event emerged as a key for evaluation of the transition from multi-structural to relational thinking.