Susan E. McMillen

Buffalo State College professor Sue McMillen explained the value of the data in a workshop at the annual Statewide Conference on Inservice Education."Looking at the Math A data, we could tell a lot about calculator use and or availability," said McMillen, a member of United University Professions.Many students made notational errors that would be prevented with up-to-date calculators, she added.

Sue McMillen, Buffalo State College

Sue McMillen Buffalo State College Buffalo, NY

Sue McMillan, Buffalo State College, NY; mcmillse@buffalostate.edu

Chair: Sue McMillan, Buffalo State College, NY; mcmillse@buffalostate.edu

Susan McMillen

by Sue McMillen, Buffalo State College, Buffalo, New York
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Research has shown that students often have little understanding of how changing the scaling unit changes the appearance of graph data (McMillen, 1993; Rogers, 1995).Yet, Principles and Standards for School Mathematics states "students in grades six to eight should begin to compare the effectiveness of various types of displays" (p. 49).Clearly, students need to understand how the choice of a scaling unit impacts the appearance of information in graphs.They need to develop the ability to work with more than one scaling unit.

Simply exposing students to different graphs with various scaling units will not illustrate the effect of scaling units.Because each graph represents a different situation, the students do not easily see the effect of the scaling unit.
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Or you want to go longer (spreading his hands apart in a horizontal direction)" (McMillen, 1993, p. 271).

Bar Graph Activities

I used a similar activity with students in grades 4 through 12 who were constructing bar graphs.The students in a fifth-grade class constructed the bar graph in Figure 3a (see p. 34) to show class members' favorite color for M&M's candies using twos as the scale.Next they redrew the graph using a smaller scaling unit (Figure 3b) and a larger scaling unit (Figure 3c), but using the same number of grid lines.Again we discussed similarities and differences.
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McMillen, Susan E. (1993).The Use of a Coordinate Graphing and Software Scaling Unit with Fourth Grade Children.Unpublished doctoral dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo.

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Sue McMillen teaches math and math education courses at Buffalo (New York) State College.She is a frequent speaker at NCTM conferences and other conferences for educators.She welcomes email at mcmillse@bscmail.buffalostate.edu

Suggestions for Teachers

The ability to understand information conveyed in graphs without being misled by visual images is an attribute of mathematical literacy.Here are some suggestions for implementing the instruction described in this article.

Use the same size grid with the same number of gridlines for all variations of a graph when illustrating shrinking and stretching scaling units.
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McMillen, Sue.July 2001.Graphing Savvy: Giving Students a Sense of Mathematical Power.ENC Focus 8(3) p.32-35.

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Sue McMillen