Pemikiran statistik dan pencapaian statistik pelajar pascasiswazah

Abstract

Statistical knowledge is important in various fields of jobs and research, however, there are many students and postgraduate students who are still less skilled in statistics. Besides that, only few studies are conducted in Malaysia on statistical thinking, and particularly no formal studies have been conducted at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) on statistical thinking. Therefore, this study aims to identify postgraduate students’ level of statistical thinking as well as their achievements statistic course. Researcher aims to identify if there is difference between the four components of statistical thinking among postgraduate students which are describing data, organizing and reducing data, representing data, and lastly analyzing and interpreting data. Moreover, the relationship between statistical thinking and the statistical achievements of postgraduate students can be identified in the study. A total of 19 postgraduate students who enrolled in MPPU1034 Application of Statistics in Educational Research in semester 1 of the 2019/2021 session at the School of Education (UTM) have been a sample of the study. The small sample size is due to the COVID-19 crisis and the closure of lectures on the campus of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia where the researcher were only able to collect data from one class of the statistic course where there were only 19 respondents. A two-part-questionnaire with past questions of PISA Mathematics test was used as the instrument in this study and it was distributed in statistic class at the beginning of the semester. The findings have shown that postgraduate students have moderate levels of statistical thinking as well as the achievements of postgraduate students in statistic courses. There is a significant relationship between statistical thinking and the achievements of postgraduate students in statistic courses. Research has shown that there are significant differences between four statistical thinking components among postgraduate students and there is also significant relationship between statistical thinking and achievements of postgraduate students in statistical courses. The recommendations from this study is that postgraduate students should place greater emphasis on development of statistical thinking so that statistical achievement can be improved. Besides, lecturers can also implement teaching and learning by emphasizing more on the development of statistical thinking to help postgraduate students improve their achievements in statistic courses. In conclusion, it is hoped that this study will help postgraduate students to recognize the importance of statistical thinking, to improve statistic achievements and to understand the importance of statistics in life.