''TinkerPlots'' is

exploratory data analysis In statistics, exploratory data analysis (EDA) is an approach of analyzing data sets to summarize their main characteristics, often using statistical graphics and other data visualization methods. A statistical model can be used or not, but prim ...

and modeling software designed for use by students in grades 4 through university. It was designed b
Clifford Konold
an
Craig Miller
at the

University of Massachusetts Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, it ...

and is currently published by the

Learn Troop Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals, and some machines; there is also evidence for some kind of learn ...

. It runs on

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was release to manufacturing, released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Wind ...

or later and

Mac OS 10.4 Mac OS X Tiger (version 10.4) is the 5th major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Mac computers. Tiger was released to the public on April 29, 2005 for US$129.95 as the successor to Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. Some of ...

or later. The program allows users to enter their own

data In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpret ...

, to import them from other applications or

the Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web s ...

, or to generate them using a sampling engine. The program also comes with 50

multivariate Multivariate may refer to: In mathematics * Multivariable calculus * Multivariate function * Multivariate polynomial In computing * Multivariate cryptography * Multivariate division algorithm * Multivariate interpolation * Multivariate optical c ...

data sets. Using TinkerPlots, students can make a large variety of

graphs Graph may refer to: Mathematics *Graph (discrete mathematics), a structure made of vertices and edges **Graph theory, the study of such graphs and their properties * Graph (topology), a topological space resembling a graph in the sense of discr ...

, including those specified for middle school i
Common Core State Standards for Mathematics
But rather than making these graphs directly using commands, students construct them by progressively organizing cases using basic operations including “stack,” “order,” and “separate.” Responding to these operations, case icons animate into different screen positions. The interface was based on observations of people organizing “data cards” on a table to make graphs to answer specific questions Innovations of TinkerPlots include using a superimposed color gradient to detect

covariation In probability theory and statistics, covariance is a measure of the joint variability of two random variables. If the greater values of one variable mainly correspond with the greater values of the other variable, and the same holds for the le ...

in two numeric attributes and a “hat plot,” a reformulated and generalized version of the

box plot In descriptive statistics, a box plot or boxplot is a method for graphically demonstrating the locality, spread and skewness groups of numerical data through their quartiles. In addition to the box on a box plot, there can be lines (which are cal ...

. The latest version is 2.3.4. This version does not have substantively different features from versions 2.1 and 2.2, but has a number of bug fixes and enhancements to remain compatible with the latest versions of Windows and MacOS.

Critical acclaim

ComputED 2010 Best Educational Software (BESSIE) AwardParents' Choice Silver Honor, 2005Technology & Learning Award of Excellence, 2005

References

Additional References

*Bakker, A., Derry, J., & Konold, C. (2006). Using technology to support diagrammatic reasoning about center and variation. In A. Rossman & B. Chance (Eds.) ''Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Teaching Statistics'' (ICOTS) CD-ROM. Salvador, Bahai, Brazil, July 2–7, 2006. * * *Konold, C., & Lehrer, R. (in press). Technology and mathematics education: An essay in honor of Jim Kaput. In L. English (Ed.), ''Handbook of International Research in Mathematics Education'', (2nd edition). New York: Routledge. * *Rubin, A., Hammerman, J., & Konold, C. (2006). Exploring informal inference with interactive visualization software. In A. Rossman & B. Chance (Eds.) ''Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Teaching Statistics'' (ICOTS) CD-ROM. Salvador, Bahai, Brazil, July 2–7, 2006.

Educational Materials using TinkerPlots

*Konold, C. (2005). ''Exploring Data with TinkerPlots''. Key Curriculum Press, . Contents: Getting Started, Learning TinkerPlots, Teaching with TinkerPlots, Activities, Activity Notes

*Brodesky, A., Doherty, A., & Stoddard, J. (2008). ''Digging into Data with TinkerPlots.'' Key Curriculum Press, 225 pp. . Contents: (1) Comparisons, Distributions, and Line Plots: Exploring Data about Cats, (2) Comparisons and Boxplots: Investigating Data about Middle-School Students, (3) Comparisons using Formulas: Investigating Data about Signatures and Words, (4) Measures of Center and Histograms: Analyzing Safety Data, (5) Relationships between Attributes and Scatter Plots: Investigating Sports Data

* Walsh, T. (2009). ''The Survey Toolkit: Collecting Information, Analyzing Data, and Writing Reports.'' Contents: Choosing a Research Question, Developing and Giving the Survey, Analyzing Survey Data, Sharing Results. 112pp.

* TinkerPlots Instructional Movies (2010). These 10 short movies where developed by th
Statistics Education Research Group
in 2010, and published with TinkerPlots, in QuickTime and AVI format. Titles: TinkerPlots Basics, Adding Data, Making Common Graphs, Comparing Groups, Exploring Relationships 1, Exploring Relationships 2, Building a Data Factory, Simulating Group Differences, Probabilities Simulation, Creating Sample Space

* TinkerPlots ''Workshop Guide'' (2007).

* TinkerPlots ''Walkthrough Guide'' and ''Quick Reference Card'' (included i
Instructors Evaluation Edition
.
Free TinkerPlots Activities and Resources on Key Curriculum Website

Free TinkerPlots Activities and Resources on University of Massachusetts Website

History

* TinkerPlots 2.3.1 - 2.3.4, Published 2016-2018 by

* TinkerPlots 2.3, published August, 2015 by

.{{Cite web , url=http://www.srri.umass.edu/node/665 , title=New Publisher for TinkerPlots | Scientific Reasoning Research Institute * TinkerPlots 2.2, published June, 2014 by

. * TinkerPlots 2.1, published November, 2012 by Key Curriculum. * TinkerPlots 2.0, published April, 2011 by Key Curriculum. * TinkerPlots 1.1, published June, 2009 by Key Curriculum. * TinkerPlots 1.0, published September, 2004 by Key Curriculum.

External links

TinkerPlots 2.3 publishers web site
at

TinkerPlots 2.2 publishers web site
at

TinkerPlots 2.1 publishers web site
at Key Curriculum Exploratory data analysis Plotting software Educational software