Interpreting association from graphical displays

Research that has explored students' interpretations of graphical representations has not extended to include how students apply understanding of particular statistical concepts related to one graphical representation to interpret different representations. This paper reports on the way in which students' understanding of covariation, evidenced through their interpretation of scatterplots, was applied to the interpretation of split stacked dot plots. The outcomes of the study suggest that incomplete understanding of the characteristics of a graph and the data displayed can lead to students applying knowledge of statistical concepts relevant to one graph type to misinterpret a different graph type.