Statistics for Kids: Model Eliciting Activities to Investigate Concepts in Statistics (Grades 4-6) (Statistics for Kids, Grades 4-6)

I consider statistics fundamental in not only conducting research, but also in understanding and interpreting a great deal of news. Also, I've loved the Prufrock Press books I've purchased. So I was very excited when I saw this book. Alas, it was not at all what I'd expected. First, I am a homeschooling parent, and this really is geared more towards group teaching.Second, it provides practically no scaffolding whatsoever in statistics -- it merely presents problems with massive amount of data, and children are supposed to come up with their models for interpreting said data. First -- having seen how people react to statistics at the college and graduate level -- I believe this would be a daunting approach for most kids (and beyond!) Second, even if children are successful in creating the "best" models or finding the best answers, this book barely provides explanations of even the most basic statistical concepts. In other words, a group might successfully finish a task without awareness of the name of or formula for (or even clear understanding of) the stastical concept they used.It seems to me that a teacher would have to be very comfortable and familiar with statistics, and children very comfortable with model-eliciting activities, for this to be a productive endeavor.Finally, because of the relatively vast amount of data provided, children will have to spend a lot of time merely inputting the data into a spreadsheet (or...shudder... doing all the calculations by hand... but that substantially decreases their ability to see visual patterns in the data unless they also plot it.) In other words, the setup means spending a lot of time not actually ANALYZING data, something that could have been remedied simply by the inclusion of a CD-ROM with the data files).I applaud the fact that there is even a book for statistics for kids, but hope the shortfalls of this one encourage the author, or some other educator, to take on the challenge of creating another text that will be both thought-provoking, as this one aspires to be, but also user-friendly.I received this book in exchange for an honest review.