Students - Statistical Software - Statistical Tasks : a Study of Problems at the Interfaces

When students work on a data analysis problem using software, we can briefly speak of two interface problems: the interface „statistical task task for the software” and the interface „subject matter task statistical task”. We studied these problems on the basis of videotaped and transcribed sessions with 4 pairs of students who co-operatively worked on statistical problems using data analysis software and a complex data set. We were able to reconstruct different patterns of software use: computer-centred patterns and statistically more reflective patterns. The statistics-software interface caused problems because students were not aware of the new meanings of variable types, data tables and other concepts in a computational environment. With regard to the subject matter statistics interface, some students were reluctant to use the distribution concept when further explaining variables for variability were at hand.