Recent research suggests that the amount of time that parents spend talking about numbers can have a big impact on the mathematical development
of their children (Levine, Suriyakham, Rowe, Huttenlocher, and Gunderson, 2010
)
. In
the study, the researchers visited the children's homes between
the ages of 14 and 30 months and recorded the amount of "number
talk" they heard from the children's parents. The researchers then tested the
children's knowledge of the meaning of numbers at 46 months. The following
data are similar to the results obtained in the study.
Children's Knowledge-of-Numbers Scores for Two Groups of Parents
Low Number-Talk Parents
High Number-Talk Parents
2, 1, 2, 3, 4
3, 3, 2, 2, 1
5, 3, 4, 1, 2
3, 4, 5, 4, 5
4, 2, 3, 5, 4
5, 3, 4, 5, 4
Complete the following distribution table.
x
5
4
3
2
1