Developing Computational Thinking on AI
and Big Data Era for Digital Society
Recommendations from APEC InMside I Project
APEC Human Resources Development Working Group
March 2021

APEC Project: HRD 01 2018

Produced by
Masami Isoda (Japan), Prof/PhD, University of Tsukuba
TEL: +81-298537283
Email: isoda@criced.tsukuba.ac.jp
Roberto Araya (Chile), Prof/PhD, University of Chile
Email: roberto.araya.schulz@gmail.com
Maitree Inprasitha (Thailand), Vice President/PhD, Khon Kaen University
Email: imaitr@kku.ac.thFor
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Secretariat
35 Heng Mui Keng Terrace
Singapore 119616
Tel: (65) 68919 600
Fax: (65) 68919 690
Email: info@apec.org
Website: www.apec.org©2021 APEC Secretariat
APEC#221-HR-01.1

Preface
This is the recommendation towards educational reform for APEC economies from APEC Project
HRD 01 2018 ‘Inclusive Mathematics for Sustainability in a Digital Economy (InMside)’ which was
implemented under the APEC central fund and self-fund of Japan, Chile and Thailand. The project
had the following components:
Steering Meeting at Tokyo, 7-9 February 2019 by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports,
Science and Technology, Japan and University of Tsukuba
http://www.criced.tsukuba.ac.jp/math/apec/apec2019/
InMside Seminar at Viña del Mar, 2-4 May 2019 by Ministry of Education, Chile andUniversidad de Chile with support of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso
http://www.criced.tsukuba.ac.jp/math/apec/apec2019chile/
Synthesis Meeting at Khon Kaen, 18-20 November 2019 by Ministry of Education, Thailand
and Khon Kaen University
https://www.crme.kku.ac.th/detail_page/apec2019.html
The recommendations were finalized by the Project Overseers and key actors with the contributions
and collaborations of curriculum specialists from APEC economies on these seminar and meetings.
The InMside has consecutive projects from secondary level (HRD 01 2018) to middle (HRD 05
2019) and primary education levels. Thus, InMside project HRD 01 2018 is called InMside I in thisreport. This recommendation illustrates the general framework for InMside projects by focusing on
secondary school level curriculum reform for InMside I, HRD 01 2018.
Project Overseers of APEC HRD 01 2018
Masami Isoda, Prof/PhD, University of Tsukuba
Roberto Araya, Prof/PhD, University of Chile
Maitree Inprasitha, Vice President/PhD, Khon Kaen University
With support of Sofian TajulArus and Orlando Gonzalez
Acknowledgement
Project Overseers would like to acknowledge the support to the projects by the APEC Secretariat,
Ministries of Japan, Chile and Thailand as well as curriculum specialists who deeply contributed at
the seminar and meetings. All contributors are appeared on the following website with theircontributions:
http://www.criced.tsukuba.ac.jp/math/apec/apec2019/http://www.criced.tsukuba.ac.jp/math/apec/apec2019chile/https://www.crme.kku.ac.th/detail_page/apec2019.html

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Chapter 1: General Issues for Curriculm Development ............................... 1
1. Introduction .................................................................................................. 1
2. General Curriculum Framework for 21st Century Skills ............................. 1
3. Towards the Curriculum Framework for AI and Big Data era: Necessity of
Humanity ...................................................................................................... 4
2. Chapter 2: Recommendations for Curriculum Reform on Computational
Thinking............................................................................................................... 9
1. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................... 9
2. WHAT STUDENTS NEED TO DO? ........................................................ 12
3. WHAT STUDENTS NEED TO KNOW? ................................................. 16
4. CURRICULUM FRAMEWORK .............................................................. 21
5. EXEMPLARS ............................................................................................ 25
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

37

3. Chapter 3: Recommendations for Curriculum Reform on StatisticalThinking ........................................................................................................... 40
1. NATURE OF BIG DATA .......................................................................... 41
2. FRAMEWORK FOR STATISTICAL THINKING .................................. 41
1. EXEMPLAR APPLICATION OF THE FRAMEWORK: AGING
POPULATION ISSUES IN APEC MEMBER ECONOMIES ..................... 43
2. STATISTICAL THINKING FOR USING BIG DATA................................ 48

REFERENCES

53

1

Chapter 1
General Issues for Curriculum Development
1．Introduction
In recent years, under the 4th industrial revolution by using AI and Big Data, APEC has been promoting
the movement for regional reform in education. In 2017, APEC leaders pledged to work together torecognize the potential of the internet and digital economy and welcomed the adoption of the APECInternet and Digital Economy Roadmap. On the Action Plan of the APEC Education Strategy for 2030
in HRDWG (2017), curriculum reforms are a key for the long-term development of human capital that
ensures their mobility.
The project ‘Inclusive Mathematics for Sustainability in a Digital Economy (InMside)’ was proposed
by Japan, Chile and Thailand with co-sponsoring economies: Indonesia, Korea, Papua New Guinea,
Russia, Chinese Taipei, Malaysia, Viet Nam, China and Canada. It was approved under the APEC GPA
funding priorities for 2018: “Promoting Sustainable, Innovative and Inclusive Growth”, “Improving
Connectivity”, and “Innovation in the Digital Age”, and treats model-tasks for “Enhancing Food
Security and Sustainable Agriculture in Response to Climate Change”, and “Strengthening Inclusive
Growth through Structural Reform”. Additionally, the project was done under APEC Chile 2019, withpriorities focused on Digital Society, Integration 4.0, Inclusive Growth and Sustainable Growth.
Seeking the essential competencies for Digital Society in APEC region by using AI and Big Data, theproject InMside focused on Computational Thinking in relation to using AI and coding, and StatisticalThinking in relation to using Big Data. On academic subjects, Computational Thinking is mostly
related with computer science and Statistical Thinking is mostly related with statistics and probability.
However the way of thinking is not limited to be used in specific academic subjects such as informatics
at senior secondary school level but used in daily life. Thus, this report is not focused on curriculum
sequence of specific academic subjects but discusses Computational Thinking and Statistical Thinking
as general issues in later chapters. The major question of this introductory chapter is why InMside I
project focus on Computational and Statistical Thinking for this curriculum reform, instead of justcoding or programing thinking. For this question, current curriculum reform status and trends are
discussed in this chapter.
2．General Curriculum Framework for 21st Century Skills
20 years ago, on the early 21st century, increasing the global economy by using various international
networks enhanced by the Internet changed the world. At that time of globalization, the nature of thesociety became into a more competitive and challenging one. On this changing society, OECD (2005)
proposed the competency for successful life and well-functioning society. Currently, every economy

2

engages on curriculum implementation for 21st Century Skills. At the HRD-Ednet Meeting in Chile(2019), Dr. Habibah Binti Avdul Rahaim, from Malaysia, proposed the following framework (Figure1). Here, the 21st Century Skills were explained by Cognitive Skills, Soft Skills and Hard Skills. It isvery much related with other economies’ curriculum frameworks. For example, Japan (2017) has threepillars: (1) Ensure that knowledge and skills are acquired (Hard skill); (2) Develop the pupils’ abilities
to think, make judgements and express themselves (Cognitive skill); (3) Cultivate the will to learn andhumanity (Soft Skill). 1 (See, Kano, 20192; Noshiro, 20193; Kawasaki 20194)

Figure 1. 21st Century Curriculum Framework by Dr. Habibah (2019)
These three pillars can be seen at the subject levels such as in the South East Asia Basic Education
Standards for Mathematics and Science (the case for mathematics in Figure 2; SEA-BES, CCRLS,
2017) which is the curriculum document for Southeast Asia5. On Figure 2, soft skills are explained by
Values, Attitudes and Habits for Human Character. In the 2000s, in relation to curriculum design,
Bloom´s Taxonomy used to revisit for clarifying higher order thinking and there were critical
discussions. On Figure 2, higher order thinking is clarified in mathematics education for the humancharacter formation as the general aim of education.
These current frameworks were general frameworks as a response to the OECD competency but eventhough they work as general frameworks, they were previously established by focusing on the 4th1

https://www.mext.go.jp/content/20200227-mxt_kyoiku02-100002604_1.pdf
http://www.criced.tsukuba.ac.jp/math/apec/apec2019/presentations/7Feb/2/rev2-Toshiharu_Kano20190207.pdf
http://www.criced.tsukuba.ac.jp/math/apec/apec2019chile/4
http://www.criced.tsukuba.ac.jp/math/apec/apec2019chile/pdf/20190504-01.pdf
5
http://www.recsam.edu.my/sub_SEA-BES/images/docs/CCRLSReport.pdf
23

3

Figure 2. SEA-BES, CCRLS for mathematics (2017)

Figure 3. Design Thinking VS Logical and Critical Thinking by Young and Kojima

4Industrial Revolution under the progress of AI and Big Data.
3. Towards the Curriculum Framework for AI and Big Data era: Necessity of Humanity

On the 2010s, there were two related movements in education for AI and Big Data. The
first movement was the Internet of Things (IoT) which is related with the design
revolutions from Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)
Education to STEAM (A: Art) education movement. The second movement was the 4th
Industrial Revolution by AI and Big Data.
The IoT movement enhanced design as well as computer and technology. Based on
Young and Kijima (2019), there was a movement from STEM education to STEAM
education in the early 2010s which was led by John Maeda (2011). He enhanced thecreation by simplicity and fostered the community of designers ‘Aesthetics +Computation’ (Maeda, 2004), and supported the Scratch language project at MIT which
is currently used around the world. In the 2000s, there were problems of commonality
on the Master of Business Administration (MBA) Program and difficulty for innovative
busines creation. As a result, he produced a new MBA program with design thinking
and collaborated with members of USA-Diet. Young and Kojima summarized thedifference of the design thinking with other thinking which was enhanced at the new
MBA program in Figure 3. A requirement to enter the MBA program was the GMAT
(Graduate Management Admission Test) which asks one quick selection answer for
English and Mathematical tasks to check the simple-quick decision-making skills to
become an MBA program student. On the basis of English and Mathematical skills,
they learned how to produce and manage innovative business for the 4th Industrial
Revolution under the AI and Big Data era.
Educational Reform on the 4th Industrial Revolution is summarized by UNESCO (2019)as the Beijing Consensus6, which recommends governments and other stakeholders in
UNESCO’s Member States to:Plan AI in education policies in response to the opportunities and challenges AI
technologies bring, from a whole-government, multi-stakeholder, and intersectoral approach, that also allow for setting up local strategic priorities toachieve SDG 4 targets.
Support the development of new models enabled by AI technologies fordelivering education and training where the benefits clearly outweigh the risks,
6

https://en.unesco.org/news/first-ever-consensus-artificial-intelligence-and-education-published-unesco

5and use AI tools to offer lifelong learning systems which enable personalized
learning anytime, anywhere, for anyone.
Consider the use of relevant data where appropriate to drive the development ofevidence-based policy planning.
Ensure AI technologies are used to empower teachers rather than replace them,and develop appropriate capacity-building programmes for teachers to work
alongside AI systems.
Prepare the next generation of existing workforce with the values and skills forlife and work most relevant in the AI era.
Promote equitable and inclusive use of AI irrespective of disability, social or
economic status, ethnic or cultural background or geographical location, with astrong emphasis on gender equality, as well as ensure ethical, transparent andauditable uses of educational data.
On APEC InMside I project, the major point of discussion for the new curriculum
framework is focused on humanity and coding, instead of just coding. Following the
UNESCO Beijing Consensus, the objective is to prepare the next generation of existing
workforce with the values and skills for life and work most relevant in the AI era. Softand cognitive skills are necessary even through people are required to have a hard skill
for coding.
Isoda (2018) proposed three types of Humanistic-Social Competency for using
computational thinking and statistical thinking as follows7:
a. Competency to lead through creating the new value on the infrastructural bases
for Society 5.08, beyond the 4th Industrial Revolution.
b. Competency to work through predicting the future society with negative andpositive aspects under the 4th Industrial Revolution and SDGs, and utilize AI andRobots judiciously and critically to develop well-functioning society.
c. Competency to live finding the own value for humanistic oriented activity on the
Digital Society. AI and Robots are progressive technology and tentativelyfunctioning on their limitation even when we don’t recognize it as a part of ourlife. It creates the new progressive-humanistic roles for us.
The report of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), Japan (2019) states
Top human capital training as (a), Middle human capital transfer as (b), and IT literacy
improver as (c). 9 For (a), METI reported the Era of Mathematical Capitalism which
7 https://kaken.nii.ac.jp/ja/grant/KAKENHI-PROJECT-19K21743/
8
https://www.japan.go.jp/abenomics/_userdata/abenomics/pdf/society_5.0.pdf
9https://www.meti.go.jp/shingikai/economy/jinzai_ikusei/pdf/001_03_00.pdf

6enhances mathematical science and includes Informatics as the most necessary sciencefor economic development. It enhanced the necessity of high qualified mathematics
education for (a).10 This is related with the documents which enhanced the necessity ofmathematics such as the Era of Mathematics from the Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council (2015) in UK. 11 The Australian Academy of Science (2015) also
published ‘The importance of advanced physical and mathematical sciences to theAustralian economy.’12 Those documents13 enhance the competency of mathematics inrelation to Informatics and Mathematical Sciences such as Data Analysis, Modeling and
Simulation for using AI and Big Data.
Lew (2020) analyzed those three human capitals from the functionality of AI.14
Humanistic perspective: AI is a human heritage. Students need to understand the
key skills that guide the rapidly change of the modern period.
Ordinary life perspective: AI is closely related to our daily lives. Students need tolearn AI in order to get on with their daily lives.
Developmental perspective: AI is like a problem solver. Students can develop
their own thinking power by exploring basic knowledge to operate AI.
Social Developmental Perspective: AI is changing the current society as well as
will change our future society. Students have to learn the AI technology to speed
up the development of workstation where they will contribute as workers after
graduation from school.
Thipakorn (2019) summarized the discussion of the seminar in Chile on InMside I by thecomponents on Figure 4.
TajulArus (2019) summarized the discussion of the Synthesis Meeting in Thailand by
Figure 5 which includes both computational thinking and statistical thinking for InMside.

10 https://www.meti.go.jp/shingikai/economy/risukei_jinzai/pdf/20190326b_report.pdf
11 https://epsrc.ukri.org/newsevents/pubs/era-of-maths/
12 https://www.science.org.au/supporting-science/science-sector-analysis/reports-and-publications/importance-advanced-physical-and
13 Other documents: “MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES: DRIVING THE UK ECONOMY”, Council for Mathematical Sciences, 2016; “One Step Beyond: Making the most of
postgraduate education”, Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS), 2010; “THE ERA OF MATHEMATICS”. The Engineering and Physical Sciences ResearchCouncil (EPSRC), 2018; “A Study of the Socio-Economical impact of Mathematics in France”, AMIES, 2015; “FOR A MEANINGFUL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE”,
Cedric Villani, 2018; “Mathematical sciences and their value for the Dutch economy”, Platform Wiskunde Nederland, 2014; and “THE IMPORTANCE OF ADVANCEDPHYSICAL AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES TO THE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMY”, Australian Academy of Science, 201514
http://www.criced.tsukuba.ac.jp/math/apec/apec2020/

7

Figure 4. For Humanistic Components for Era of AI and Big Data (Thipakorn, 2019)

Figure 5. Curriculum Framework for Era of AI and Big Data on InMside

8

Figure 5 is the general framework for Computational Thinking and Statistical Thinking
for InMside which implicates that any curriculum materials in education from K to 12
can be seen from both ways of thinking and propose the necessity to revise the curriculumon this perspective to develop Computational Thinking and Statistical Thinking througheducation. The revision of the framework for Computational Thinking and StatisticalThinking will be explained at the chapters 2 and 3. Even though it looks like humanity is
not included, there is a reference to 21st century skills curriculum framework in generaland specific such as Figure 1 and Figure 2.
(Wording of Chapter 1 by Masami Isoda)

9Chapter 2.
Recommendations for Curriculum Reform on Computational Thinking
Roberto Araya

Masami Isoda

CIAE IE, University of Chile, Chile University of Tsukuba, Japan
In this chapter we propose recommendations and exemplars for a curriculum on Computational
Thinking for the Digital Economy (Isoda, 2020). In order to do so, we consider the challenges ourstudents face on the 21st century for the new coming digital society. We consider a vision proposedby Thipakorn (2020) based on three central questions: What characters do our students need to “be”?
What competences do our students need to be able to “do”? What literacies do our students need to“know”?
1. INTRODUCTION
Already smartphones efficiently guide us to reach a place in the city and will soon take control of ourvehicles, negotiate with other devices, decide for us to undergo a surgical operation, and they will
choose our career and friends. We are just entering the digital society and it is still difficult to foresee
several other disruptive transformations that will change the nature of our personal and professional
lives. What characters do our students need to “be” on the digital society?

Is Computational Thoughta new type of thinking that we did not use until now and why should we help develop in new
generations?
Why Computational Thinking (CT)?
World organizations such as UNESCO, countries, and scholars are increasingly proposing that
Computational Thinking (CT) is a critical cognitive disposition that students need to adopt and use it
efficiently to solve the challenges of the digital society. For example, Conrad Wolfram recommends
that “we should be teaching math as if computers exist.” We can add that we should also teach biology
as if computers have enormous power in genetic analysis. We should teach social sciences considering
the availability of an enormous flow of people's behavior data coming from their mobile phones. We
should teach language considering the disruptive advance of machine translation and voice recognition.
Yet, we teach all subject matters as if this enormous and constantly increasing computational power
did not exist! Most problems today are solved using computers, from servers on the cloud to oursmartphones. CT is necessary to have the ability to tap on computers and modern digital tools to work
to solve those problems. Koshi (2020) emphasizes that in the digital society it is necessary to have thequalities and abilities to observe and assimilate various phenomena in the world as information andconnections and utilize information and information technology appropriately and effectively to
discover and solve problems and form their own ideas. Therefore CT must play a very important role10

in the new curriculum.
What is Computational Thinking?
CT comes from an aspiration that has been turning for centuries and it is beautifully represented in a
letter written by Leibnitz in 1685 “The only way to rectify our reasoning is to make them as tangible
as those of the mathematicians, so that we can find our error at a glance, and when there are disputes
among persons, we can simply say: Let us calculate, without further ado, to see who is right”. Leibnitz
was influenced by the work of 14th century Majorcan philosopher, Ramon Llull, who designed amechanical machine to reformulate arguments and ideas in terms of a characteristica universalis, or
universal language, so as to have computable arguments. According to Llull, the machine could provefor itself the truth or the lie of a postulate. This means, decomposing arguments in term of thousandsof simple units, which can be recombined and thus able to be expressed and performed as mechanicalcomputations. Later, in 1936 Alan Turing proposed a sequential machine, the Turing machine, which
provides a precise definition for computational steps and algorithms. This is the core of computational
thinking as expressed today by computer scientist Jeannette Wing (2006): “Computational Thinking
is the thought processes involved in formulating a problem and expressing its solution(s) in such a
way that a computer – human or machine – can effectively carry out”. In other words, CT is understoodas a problem solving paradigm of mathematizing a problem in such a way that the computer can
execute it (Tin Lam, 2020). CT moves students beyond technology literacy, it presents endlesspossibilities for creatively solving problems (Nguyen Chi Thanh). Think, for example, the Tower ofHanoi puzzle, proposed by the French mathematician Edouard Lucas in 1883. It is a problem alreadyclassic and widely used in computer science courses to begin to develop algorithmic thinking, andvery particularly to introduce the notion of recursion.
Is this reasoning different from mathematical thinking (Isoda et al, 2012)? CT is very powerful for
problem-solving. It includes several elements (Ulep, 2020). First, it requires being able to formulate
problems in a way that enables to use a computer and other tools to help solve them. Second, thestudent must be able to represent data logically. This means, ordering, organizing and analyzing data.
Third, it is also needed to be able to select and preprocess the data. Fourth, students have to have theskills to build models and do simulations. Fifth, students have to develop the attitude to automate
solutions, and do it through algorithmic thinking (a series of ordered steps). Sixth, they have to identify
analyze, and implement the most efficient and effective solutions. Seventh, students have to be able togeneralize and transfer this problem-solving process to a wide variety of problems. Programing
Thinking cultivated through repetitions of these steps (Kano, 2020), and is illustrated in figure 2
adapted from Kano (2020).

11

Figure 1: Programming Thinking
Four basic strategies of Computational are decomposition, pattern recognition, algorithms, andabstraction.

Decomposition means divide to conquer (Jordan, 2013). The problem has to beconsidered as a sequence of simpler problems. These simpler problems have to simple enough so thatcan be solved mechanically, and hopefully in parallel. This is critical for having good scalability.
Pattern Recognition means to be able to detect and describe powerful patterns that can contain themechanisms to find a solution of the problem. Algorithm is the basis of algorithmic thinking. Thisoccurs when someone observes repeated patterns in problems and then generalizes a set of rules for
dealing with such situations (so that one need not think this through anew each time that problem
occurs). Abstraction means to extract some hidden characteristics that are critical for the problem, andsimplify them to be able to manage them without losing its power. Additionally, we have to consider
that all these types of thinking are not operating isolated from each other, they have to beinterconnected and successfully integrated.
What students need to be?
Computational thinking has close connections with epistemology, ethics and wisdom. All of themshare several core concepts such as knowledge, learning, and values. For example, CT provide tools
to design intelligent and moral artificial agents that accompanies and give emotional and intelligent
support to us. These are agents that can be completely autonomous, but we have to learn to trust them.
Consider the case of an accident in an autonomous vehicle. Who is responsible? What happens if theaccident is due to a system error, or due to an error in design flaws? But what happens if the vehicle
learns autonomously?
Another critical aspect is moral biases. Devices learn autonomously, but as us, they are learning frominformation that already has strong sexual and ethnic biases. Students have to be conscious and vigilant
on this issues, understand why they could emerge, and able to do the corrections required. They have12

to have the ability to grasp various phenomena from the viewpoint of information and connections,and connect multiple pieces of information to find new meanings, and attitude toward creating
information technology to improve quality of life and build a sustainable society (Koshi, 2020).
2. WHAT STUDETS NEED TO DO?
There are three core Computational Thinking processes students need to do (Araya et al, 2019):
algorithmic thinking, also called traditional computational thinking (Santillan, 2020), computationalmodeling, and machine learning. Each one of them provides the basis for becoming an empowered
citizen on the digital society. They are not sufficient, but nevertheless necessaries.
Algorithmic Thinking
Algorithmic thinking emerges when someone observes repeated patterns in problems and thengeneralizes a set of rules for dealing with such situations (so that one need not think this through anew
each time that problem occurs). In effect, one creates (formally or informally) an algorithm or rational
procedure. This sort of thinking is often used in problem solving and in computer programming. It is
the most easily recognizable pillar of computational thinking.
According to Chi Thanh (2020), algorithmic thinking can be very well illustrated and promoted with
the Tower of Hanoi game. In this game the student has to start on the configuration on the left of figure
2, and her goal is to obtain the configuration of the right. To do that she has to move beds from one
mast to a neighbor one making sure that always smaller beds are above bigger ones.

Figure 2: Tower of Hanoi gameThe three initial moves will be the following

Figure 3: Three initial moves in the Tower of Hanoi game
These three moves, shown in figure 3, satisfy the game restrictions, but the student has to think how
to continue and whether is possible to reach the goal.
What instructions on paper or in your smartphone you would write and send to a classmate in order tosolve this challenge? What is the shortest set of instructions that you could write? Is there a certain
pattern that you can capture for writing efficient instructions?
Computational modeling13

A computational model is a mathematical model which implies and uses computational means. For
example, the following sequence of boards represent a forest fire propagation model (Araya, 2017).
Each cell is an acre that can be burning (red), already burned (black) or un-touched yet by the fire
(white). The left board shown in figure 4, is at the moment of initial fire. The second board illustrates
the result of the propagation to the next time period. The third board shows what the status at the nexttime period.

Figure 4: three consecutives stages of a forest fire propagation
The model specifies mechanical and computational rules that describe the mechanism of fire
propagation.
For each cell of the board write the rules that specify its behavior. How should each cell be painted oneach time period? How would you modify the rules to include wind direction at each cell?
Machine learning thinking
Machine learning (ML) is the science algorithms used to learn to perform a specific task without using
explicit instructions, relying on set of examples, detecting patterns and doing inferences. It is a subset
of artificial intelligence. Machine learning algorithms build a mathematical model based on sample
data, known as "training set", in order to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly
programmed to perform the task. According to Jordan (2019), ML is an algorithmic field that blends
ideas from statistics, computer science and many other disciplines to design algorithms that process
data, make predictions, and help make decisions. Thus ML is also part of statistical thinking (Gonzalez
et al, 2019), and requires probabilistic intuition and math knowledge (Visostskiy, 2020).
ML requires recognizing categories and the list of features that can potentially predict the categories,
the recollection of examples or cases, the use of different machine learning algorithms, and the ability
to test the validity and interpret the results. Machine Learning is at the core of Artificial Intelligence,
because it is learning by machines and because of its applications to real world problems. UNESCO(2019), recently reviewed the recent trends in the evolution of AI and its profound impact on humansocieties, economies and the labor market, as well as on education and lifelong learning systems.
UNESCO recommends governments to consider planning AI in education policies
Typically the data set is divided in two: training set and test set. Using the data from the training set
the ML model are built. Then using the test set the models are run on that set and assessed the quality

14

of its predictions.
One key component to understand ML algorithms is scatter plots as in figure 5, where two classes are
displayed: circles and crosses. These form two clouds on the scatter graph.

Figure 5: scatter plot with two classes: red crosses and blue circles
The core idea of ML is finding a curve that better discriminate the two clouds as shown in figure 6.

Figure 6: Student placing a ruler in order to better separate the two point clouds
In our previous example, a line discriminating both clouds is shown in figure 7.

Figure 7: Straight line that best separates the two clouds
This straight line is a linear discriminator that can be obtained using Support Vector Machine (SVM)
method. This is an example of machine learning a linear model. In a two dimensional scatter graph,this means finding a straight line that better separates the two clouds, as shown in figure 8 taken fromthe Open Lesson at the Chilean National Congress, May 2, with an 8th grade class, for the APEC 2019

15

InMside meeting in Chile.
ML is part of statistics and data science. It combines domain expertise, programming skills, andknowledge of math and statistics to extract meaningful insights from data, as for example in (Lambas,2020) for the analysis of India air quality data. Data science practitioners apply machinelearning algorithms to numbers, text, images, video, audio, and more to produce artificial intelligence(AI) systems that perform tasks which ordinarily require human intelligence. Students need to be
exposed to data interpretation in which they are required to apply their theoretical knowledge tonumbers and use their reasoning skills to make inferences based on logic and trends from given setsof data (TajulArus, 2020).

Figure 8: placing a ruler to best separate two clouds
For example, after detecting the most frequent characters on the Little Red Riding Hood story, thefrequency table isTable 1: Frequency of characters named on the Little Red Riding Hood story
Moreover if we connect those characters that are in the same line in the book, the graph in figure 9 is
obtained:

16

Figure 9: Graph obtained by co-occurrence of characters at the same line of the text.
This mechanically built graph summarizes the interactions of the story.
3. WHAT STUDENTS NEED TO KNOW?
As emphasized by Yunianto (2020) Computational thinking was conceived by Pappert as a thinking
skill and “objects-to-think-with” that arises from working with computers. Here we consider thedifferent strategies when doing CT using computers.
How to choose a computational thinking strategy?
When solving a problem we have to consider and assess first the amount of data available. If there is
not much data then we have to consider the type of knowledge required to solve it. If it is mainly
heuristics, then we have to specify the rules and build the code. For example, building expert systems
with hundreds of rules. However if there are mathematical model that can be translated onto computermodels then this type of models should be included. For example, models that represent dynamics
with discrete time and discrete space. On the other hand, if there is huge amount of data, then a machinelearning model can be built. In this case the system is not programmed but trained with the data. These
decisions can be represented as a decision tree like the one in figure 10 (Reynolds and Araya, 1995).

17

Figure 10: CT strategy selection decision tree
What is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence demonstrated by machines, in contrast to the natural
intelligence displayed by humans. Leading AI textbooks define the field as the study of "intelligent
agents": any device that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of
successfully achieving its goals. AI usually combines Algorithmic Thinking. Computational Models
and Machine Learning.
For example, the board of figure 11 illustrates the trajectory of an agent that moves maximizing thenumbers on the board (Araya, submitted). This is the case of tropism of a simple animal moving towhere is more food. In the following figure the agent starts in the blue cell with 10 units, then moveto the neighbor cell with 15 units, then to the neighbor cell with 24 units, and so on.
The mechanism is very simple, but for an observer that doesn´t see the number of the cells the behavior
can be interpreted as intelligent. Moreover, the numbers can be other values that represent odor andthe agent is a dog searching for a hidden bone. The numbers can also be more abstract values (likedegrees of risks) for an autonomous vehicle. A more challenging situation is when the numbers of theboard change as the agent move. This means, the agent modifies the environment with its behavior.
This is a more real model for a bigger number of applications. Additionally, if we have other agents,
they also modify the environment. This scenario is much closer to the real world. Decision in such acase are very complex, and requires more sophisticated intelligence. Furthermore, if we add a more
complex inner life to each agent then we approach to the behavior of organisms with higher cognitiveand emotional mechanisms.

Finally we get to agent that model human behavior, to whom we cantalk and work together. Thus, AI and Humanity, start to be deeply connected. Both are necessary todevelop a new literacy (Isoda, 2020).

Figure 11: Board with numbers that represents nutrient units and organism trajectory

18

optimizing its nutrition
However there are still several limitations in AI that our students should be aware of. Kenyon (2019)emphasizes the inability of AI to learn by analogy. Analogical thinking is a critical ability in humans
and several other animals. Another limitation are biases and the concentration in superficial features.
This limitation is illustrated by Kenyon, in a visual categorization task to learn discriminate dogs fromcats. If all dogs in the training set wear a metallic tag and cats do not wear such tags, then ML willlearn to categorize based on the presence of the tags and not real differences between dogs and cats.
This is an error that toddlers neither other animals do.
Why machine learning is so popular currently?
Machine Learning is more powerful with more data. Given the increasing availability of data, fromthe web, from instruments, cameras, smartphones, internet of things, transactions data from retail,financial and medical data, more and more applications are possible, and better precision is reached.
On the other hand, the huge increase of computer power makes possible to handle more data and faster.
This is critical for accurate learning.
According to Moore´s law; the number of transistors (computing power) duplicates every 2 years. Thislaw has been valid since 1975 when Gordon Moore postulated. Additionally, there has been big
discoveries on Machine Learning algorithms. These increasingly effective machine learningalgorithms has already had a big impact on visual object recognition and on speech recognition thatmakes possible today automatic face recognition and automatic transcription from speech to text withhuman level error rates.
What Machine Learning methods students should learn?
There are several types of ML algorithms. The main ones are the following
Artificial neural networks
Artificial neural networks (ANNs), or connectionist systems, are computing systems inspiredby the biological neural networks. Such systems of networks of abstract neurons are trainedwith examples or cases. Thus the network "learns" from this examples. This is done without
being programmed with any task-specific rules.
Figure 12 shows a layer with two abstract neurons on the left and their connection to a third
neuron on the right.

Figure 12: Two layers neural network
This is a very simple neural network, with three neurons and two connections. The activationof the left neurons produce an activation on the right neuron, and this depends on the strengthof the connections. In the following case, shown in figure 13, one connection has more19strength

Figure 13: Two layers neural network with one connection with higher strength
Machine learning with neural networks is the process of changing the strength of theconnections so that the network does a specific recognition or action task.
Figure 14 is a neural network with 6 neurons. At the left is the input layer with 2 sensory
neurons, at the middle layer there are 3 neurons (this is called a hidden layer), and at the rightthere is a layer with 1 output neuron.

Figure 14: Three layers neural network
Decision trees
Decision tree learning uses a decision tree as a predictive model to go from features that are
represented in the branches to predictions, which are represented in the leaves.
For example in figure 15 a decision tree the model predicts if the engine oil has watercontamination or not. The feature is the concentration of Sodium (Na). If it is lower than 17ppm, then the prediction is that the oil is normal. If the Na concentration is higher than 17
ppm then the prediction is that there is water contamination.

Figure 15: Engine diagnosis decision tree
Support vector machines (SVM)
An SVM training algorithm is a linear classifier as shown in figure 16. This means that thepredictor is a linear combination of a sample of the features. For example, a prediction to be20

sick Z is a combination of fever temperature X and degree of pain Y. That is
Z = a*X + b*Y + c
The SVM algorithm finds appropriate coefficient a, b and c.

Figure 16: Linear classifier marked with a ruler
Genetic algorithms
A genetic algorithm (GA) is an algorithm that mimics the biological process of natural
selection,

where

phenotypes

are

the

solutionsthatdependon

genotypes.

After mutation and crossover new genotypes and therefore new phenotypes appear on the
population, and some of these phenotypes can solve the problem.
For example, in strategy discovery, both conscious and unconscious, the process can be
explained throughout a genetic algorithm mechanism (Siegler et al, 2005). In order to solve
25 + 12 – 12 one basic strategy is to focus attention at the left of the expression and then do
25+12. Then shift attention to the right and subtract 12. These actions can be expressed ascomposition of operators. In graphical terms this is a sequence of blocks (like Lego blocks)
illustrated in figure 17. Each block is an action or a micro machine. Following the mathconvention for composition of operators, the first to be executed from right to left.

Figure 17: Sequence of actions executed from right to left that represent the strategy to first
add the two numbers at the left of the expression and then add to that the number at the rightThis sequence is like a molecule composed of genes. The yellow gene or action is O_Left that
instructs the robot to focus visual attention on the extreme left of the expression. This means
to focus on 25 on the expression 25+12-12. Then O_sRight instructs the robot to shift one
position to the right. This means where the first 12 is. Then O_Sum instructs the robot to add
the two numbers. That is, 25+12. Then O_sRight instructs the robot to shift the visual attention
and focus on the second 12. That is -12. And finally the last action instructs the robot to add
the previous result with -12.
How then is the genetic mechanism to discover an alternative strategy to solve this problem?
If after a deletion and mutation, the insertion shown in figure 18 is made, then the sequence21

can be subject to the following transformation:.
Figure 18: Insertion of the upper sequence in the original one
But this long sequence is redundant. It computes certain number that doesn´t affect the final
result. If the redundancy is eliminated the sequence in figure 19 is obtained:

Figure 19: New sequence obtained after elimination of redundancy
But this sequence means go first to the 12 – 12 section and do the operation and then add 25.
This is a new strategy, must efficient, and completely discovered by the genetic algorithm.
This case illustrates how a new sequence of operations is discovered by mutations andcrossover.
Another fruitful example is in design and architecture (DeLanda, 2012). For example,
designing a song or a poster for a given market niche. Initially ten proposals are made bydifferent designers. This is the first generation. Then the proposals are assessed by a random
set of 200 people from the market niche in a web score system. Using this scoring, the 5 best
are selected and extra 5 are generated mixing the best with the other 5 better proposals. Thisis the second generation of 10 proposals. Then another sample of 200 people score theproposals of the second generation, and the process continues for 8 generations.
Before the implementation of sophisticated learning models, it is good strategy to try mechanicalversions of it (Wylie, 2018). For example, for a learning algorithm to play toc-tac-toe, Donald Michie
implemented it with a large pile of matchboxes. An explanation and simulator of the mechanical gamecan be seen in http://www.mscroggs.co.uk/menace/ .
We suggest that to learn an algorithm it is a good didactic strategy to ask students to try to implement
it in a concrete and mechanical way before writing code in a particular programing language.
4. CURRICULUM FRAMEWORKCurriculum framework for traditional coding already exists, however it is needed a new one with thefocus on core concepts of AI, computational modeling, and Machine Learning, and some of its typicalapplications.
Machine learning models are feasible to teach at Middle and high school?
Students can easily learn the idea of features and categories or predictions. Exemplar 2 illustrates these22

concepts. We need students to learn to recognize in different applications what would be features andwhat are classes. For example in face recognition, features are just the color of each pixel of a photo,and the class is 1 if this picture is the picture of a given person and 0 if not.
Notion of training set and test set. Both sets are part of all the recollected cases. The students has torandomly select a proportion of the pictures, for example 50%, for training with ML. And once
generated the algorithm, test accuracy on the rest of the examples.
Decision trees and SVM core ideas can be implemented in middle and high school using
1 dimensional scatter plots with the number line
2 dimensional scatter plots andDrawing discriminators with a ruleFinding the equation of the linear discriminator
Testing the discriminator in new testing set of data.
Curriculum framework
Tin Lam (2020) asks whether Computational Thinking should be a subject taught in school or to beincorporated in an existing subject. Ulap (2020), proposes that the goal of the K to 12 mathematics
Curriculum is the development of learners’ problem solving and critical thinking skills.
In order to materialize the new curriculum underlying the above said entities, a Curriculum Reform
Framework model has to be established for the curriculum development process. This model will
become the reference implementation framework model in carrying out the design process ofcurriculum formulation and implementation of the new curriculum proposed in each APEC member
economies for high school, middle school and primary school respectively.
The proposed curriculum reform framework is based on the following implementation framework
model (TajulArus, 2020).
The framework is divided into two main layers which are the conceptual framework and development
framework (adapted from TajulArus, 2020), shown in figure 20.

23

Figure 20: Curriculum Framework for Computational Thinking on InMside
The conceptual framework
It defines the important aspects to be addressed in the new curriculum based on the key
elements underlined whether it becomes a subject-based curriculum, thematic,
interdisciplinary or embedded across curricula. While it is also important for economies todecide on whether to adopt Standard-based Curriculum or Outcome-based Curriculum orCompetency-based Curriculum.
The development framework
Where curriculum developers refer the implementation framework model and take thenecessary actions in designing and developing the new curriculum at high school, middle
school and primary school based on the following fundamental curriculum components:
Content
Refers to the syllabus developed on the content of the knowledge discipline which
related with academic subject. On syllabus, the content is existed on the sequenceand the scope of the content based on the learner’s cognitive level. The respective
knowledge, skills and values are determined accordingly.
Objective
Objective specified under general aim of curriculum and content on the syllabus.
Teaching and Learning materials
Teaching materials is the content which embedded the objective in curriculum. It
includes tools such as hardware and software that are used to assist learners to meetthe expectations for learning based on the specified curriculum.

24

Exemplars
For teacher, it is the main reference for curriculum development. It shows content
and teaching materials in realizing the new curriculum through documented teaching
and learning activities which covers the curriculum components. For students, it is
the learning materials which are able to learn content and objective, and transfer
various ways.
Methodology and Didactics
Refers to how knowledge or content is imparted or transferred to the learner.
Methodology and didactics are chosen to realize authentic activity for students to
produce and learn knowledge. This is done through various T&L strategies forteachers to adopt in order to achieve the objective of the lesson.
Assessment
Refers to the ways in determining the performance of the learner in learning by using
various assessment tools
Time Allocation
Specified period of time (allocated hours per year) for teaching and learning to takeplace within school time table according to the scope of content determined in thesyllabus at every level of schooling.
Necessary points to consider
Veracity of data
There is a need to point out that big data has its own implication especially on the aspect of the veracityof data in the modern age of IR4.0. The question of accuracy, trustworthy and precision are always amajor concern when dealing with large data sets. Large amountof time is used to clean the data

whether it involves structured or unstructured data. Therefore it is imperative to address this issue tothe learners that they have to be very mindful on the implications and effects in making decisions
based on analyzed data. Proper

procedure has to be formulated in carrying out big dataprocessing and analysis in order to achieve prudency in the findings and eliminate negative ripple
effects in decision making that could create destructions.
Humanity & Values
Hence, the value of humanity, ethics, integrity, truthfulness, honesty and responsibility are the essenceof important traits to educate learners towards future well-being and balance to the disruptive nature
created by AI and Big Data in Industrial Revolution 4.0.
Suitability of Students Cognitive Level
It is important to develop sound curriculum content and learning resources that are suitable for thelearners’ cognitive levels and abilities with different learning behavior. The scope of learning at eachlevel of schooling has to be structured in order to achieve meaningful learning experience to the learner.

25

Teacher education
According to Lew (2020), South Korea has developed a Software Teacher Education program focusedon:Securing the software education leadership capacity of elementary school teachers in preparation forthe mandatory software education of the 2015 revised curriculum
Reinforcement of the teaching ability of elementary school teachers to foster creative andinterdisciplinary talents of students pursued by the 2015 revision of the curriculum
Improving the creative and logical thinking power of elementary school teachers by improving their
computing power.
Korea has proposed a curriculum with a very detailed list of teachers' circles that can be seen in (Lew,
2020).
Contents for High School
Algorithmic Thinking
Instructions, conditionals, arrays, lists, cycles, decomposition, factorization, recursion,
pseudo code, debugging.
Computational Modeling
Arrays, dynamic systems, iteration, boards, agents, visualization, convergence, equilibrium,
stability.
Machine Learning
Training and test data sets, features, classes, scatter graphs, linear discriminators, decision
trees, neural networks, genetic algorithm.
5. EXEMPLARS
Exemplars are examples of best practice which are designed to assist learners to increase theirunderstanding of particular skills, content or knowledge in a given situation. They are tools that help
to articulate established criteria and standards in the new curriculum. By using exemplars, it is a way
to clearly explain and realize the curriculum into teaching and learning practice that can be understoodand carried out by teachers. Exemplars are often used particularly during training or orientation
courses in disseminating the curriculum.
Exemplar 1: Algorithmic thinking with coloring book for first gradeColoring books are very attractive to students and they can be a very powerful tool for learning.
We show here some activities from (Araya, 2019) for understanding logical instructions withlist, arrays, and searching procedures, and also for writing such type of instructions. These
instructions are a kind of pseudo code, and have been designed as a preparation for developing
algorithmic thinking through reading and writing pseudo code.
Pages A of the coloring book (Figure 21) give instructions on what objects to paint and with

26

what colors. The corresponding page B has the same drawings of page A but the instructions
are left blank and the student has to write new instructions for a classmate. The classmate will
receive the sheet and has to paint according to the instructions. Thus page A is a model ofpseudo codes ant on page B the student creates her own pseudo code.

Figure 21: Colorea Ideas coloring book and first graders writing coloring instructions
for classmates

Figure 22: A first grader reading instructions and the teacher grading in her
smartphone.
As shown in figure 22 at the right, the activities of all students are graded by the teacher in
her smartphone (Araya, 2020a, Araya 2020b), each one associated with the national
curriculum.
In figure 23 at the left is shown a page A where the first instruction is very direct, but thesecond one introduces a series of boxes each one with balls. This instructions introduces thenotion of lists and arrays. At right is page B where the student has to write instructions (code)
for a classmate.

27

Figure 23: Pages A and B of the coloring book
Examples of possible instructions are:For each box paint one ball more than in the neighboring box on its right
While there is a box with all its ball white then paint red one white ball of that box
Or more close to a typical computer code, the instruction could be:
For box 1 up to box 4 dooFor ball 1 up to ball 5
Paint the ball with color red

o

End

End
Figure 24 at the left shows page A, a search exercise. This is a typical action in data bases. It
requires reading a list of instructions given by different characters and infer where the object
is hidden (the hidden object is never shown). At right is page B, where the student has to hide
an imaginary object and write the instructions (code) to a classmate for searching and finding
the object.

28

Figure 24: Search instructions on page A at the left. On page B students should write
instructions to be decoded by a classmate.
Writing meaningful instructions that provides a unique place where the object is hidden is nota simple task. It requires careful planning and understanding, and later very probably a careful
debugging of the instructions.
Exemplar 2: Machine learning with coloring book for elementary school students
How would you train a computer? Is it similar to train your dog? First, you need to show someexamples to the machine. Then, you have to verify if the machine has really learned. Thismeans that you need a set of examples for training, and another set of examples for testing. It
is important that the testing examples are different examples from the ones used for training.
Moreover, it is critical that the testing and training examples are selected randomly from theset of all examples.
What is an example? Imagine you are the trainer and one of your classmates is the machine.
You will train him with the two fish bowls shown in figure 25. This is a sample with 10 fishes.
The fishes have different features: sizes, directions, and eye colors. The task is to learn if sizeor direction is related to eyes colors. Then you have 10 examples.

Your classmate have tofigure out possible rules or patterns, and in a new fish bowl (a test set) he will have to paintthe eyes of the fishes. Then you will compare with the colors of the test set and compute theagreement between his painting and the ones in the test fish bowl.

29

Figure 25: Two training fish bowls.
Figure 26 has the test with 4 fishes, but in this case the color of the eyes is not shown. Yourclassmate has to paint them.

Figure 26: The testing fish bowl.
Once your classmate has painted them you compare with the colors that comes in the test set
and then count in how many cases his production was correct. This will be the performance
metric. You can compare with the predictions proposed by other students. Figure 27 has thetest set with the true color of the fishes’ eyes.

Figure 27: The fishes of the testing fish bowl with the true color of their eyes.

30

It is important that the students understand the notion of an example, a training set, a test set,
the random selection of training and test set, and a performance metric. It is also important tohave extra test set and measure the robustness of the predictions. It is also important that thestudents realize that if the training set is biased, then the machine will learn and produce biases
solutions. ML is statistical thinking, and its connections to probabilistic intuitions are very
important. As proposed in (Visotskiy, 2020) students can create task and simulate in electronic
spreadsheets, in order to practice and improve their statistical and probabilistic intuitions.
Exemplar 3: Truck engine diagnosis

Figure 28: Mining track and an oil sample from the engine.
In mining, large trucks are critical. Therefore, a sample of engine oil is taken from every truck
every 3 days and an analysis is performed (figure 28). One of the problems is to detect asearly as possible water contamination. If so, the truck should be immediately sent for
maintenance.
Table lists samples from 16 cases from trucks from the Chuquicamata copper mine (Reynolds
et al, 1995). In 9 cases, after opening the engine, maintenance personnel found that the engine
was in a normal condition. In 7 cases they found that the engine had water contamination. In
the lab analysis of the engine oil, the lab technicians measured the particles per million of Fe,
Cu, Na and they also measured the flash point of the oil.
The challenge is to develop a program or bot that reads the oil data and without stopping thetruck and opening the engine, and automatically predicts whether the engine is normal or withwater contamination.

31

Case FeCu
Na Flash pointDiagnosis
1
19
3
6
204 normal
2
45
11
8
204 normal
3
28
15
8
222 normal
410
4
6
220 normal
5
39
15 17
204 normal
6
37
13 15
204 normal
717
4
8
226 normal
810
3
8234 normal
9
24
39 15
212 normal
1064
10 254220 Water contamination
11
57
13 87
196 Water contamination
12
34
87 101230 Water contamination
13
54
8 65
220 Water contamination
14
43
15 54
204 Water contamination
15
69
15 74
228 Water contamination
16
77
17 32
230 Water contamination

Table 2: 16 samples of oil, each one with 4 variables, and its diagnosis.
There are 6 possible scatter plots as shown in figure 29.

Figure 29: Six scatter plots. Each one with a pair of variables.
If we select the third scatter plot (figure 30) then with a ruler any student can draw a line
separating black versus white dots, as shown in the next figure:32

Figure 30: Scatter plot with Na concentration and Flash point.
This, this red line drawing can be translated in a decision tree, which has been learned by thissimple Machine Learning Algorithm.

Figure 31:
This means that the data base has 16 cases (as shown in the top of figure 31), where 9 of themwere normal and 7 of them had Water contamination. However on those cases with Sodium(Na) concentration less than or equal to 17 particles per million (ppm) all the 9 cases werenormal. And, those cases with Na concentration higher than 17 ppm all of them had watercontamination.
This exemplar promotes students to develop an attitude of searching for meaningful patterns,
conceiving and exploring many symptoms and distinguishing them from diagnoses, andlooking for empirical evidence of interconnections in the historical data.
Exemplar 4: Understanding of the outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV).

33

Figure 32: WHO COVID-19
Coronavirus is the world's most urgent problem today as shown in the WHO image
in figure 32. This exemplar calls students to analyze it and contribute to finding
solutions. It is of great significance for everyone that ML can help us in an emergency
like this.
As shown in figure 33, up to February 9th , there have been:
814 deaths
37,595 cases
6,196 cases in severe conditions

Figure 33: Total cases and total deaths
Figure 34 has the daily cases.

Figure 34: Daily cases
And Figure35 shows the daily cases growth factor.

Figure 35: Growth Factor
What is the relation between these graphs? Figure 36 has the daily deaths

34

Figure 36: Daily deaths
And the daily deaths growth factor is in figure 37

Figure 37: Growth factor of daily deaths
What are the relations between these graphs, and wat can of prediction can they help
to do?
Consider now the updated data up to February 25th with 80,249 cases and 2,707
deaths.

Figure 38: updated data up to February 21
Some interesting questions are:Were the previous predictions correct?
Why the total cases graph has a break in the trends by mid-February?
Can you correct the daily cases trends based on the daily deaths graphs?
Can you make new predictions with this new updated data?

35

One critical question is to understand what are the characteristics of patients that cancause death due to infection of the Coronavirus? The first 17 deaths are in thefollowing table (simplified version of Wang, Tang Wei, 2020, Updated understandingof the outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in Wuhan, China. Journal of
Virology. 29 January 2020 https://doi.org/10.1002/jmv.25689

Figure 39: The Medical Virology Journal
If the information of these cases is obtained in detail as in the previous table with thefirst 17 cases, then two Machine Learning strategies can be done.
Death versus No Death
Severe Condition versus Non Severe Condition
With the first data base Machine learning can be applied to detect features or
combination of features that will predict deaths. With the second data base Machine
Learning can help find features or combination of features that will predict severe
condition.

Table 3: 1st symptom to death
Another critical question is to find the characteristic of the patients that produce amuch faster death. From the data already available for the first 17 patients that diedfrom Coronavirus infection (table 3), we can compute the mean of days of firstsymptom to death, and then classify as fast deaths those patients that died before that36

average.
Table 4 has an extra column at the extreme right that marks with one those patientswith fast death (first symptom to death less than average), and zero those with sower
deaths (first symptom to death higher or equal than average).

Table 4: 1st symptom to death above average
If we plot on a number line the age of each patient but marking with a circle thosewith slow death and with a cross those with fast death, then we have the following
one dimensional scatter graph (figure 40);

Figure 40: On dimension scatter plot
From this one dimensional scatter graph we can see a clear pattern. Older patients die
faster. But we can also identify the critical age, and represent it with a decision tree
(figure 41):

Figure 41: Decision tree induced from the data

37

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Support from ANID/ PIA/ Basal Funds for Centers of Excellence FB0003 is gratefully acknowledged,
and from María Jesús Honorato from the Curriculum Unit of the Ministry of Education of Chile.
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29. Visotskiy, I. (2020) The Collector’s Problem:

An Example of Inciting to Thinking.

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30. Wang, Tang Wei, 2020, Updated understanding of the outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus(2019-nCoV)in

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31. Wing, J. M. (2006) Computational thinking. Commun. ACM, 49, 33–35.
32. Wylie, C. (2018) How 300 Matchboxes Learned to Play Tic-Tac-Toe Using MENACE
https://opendatascience.com/menace-donald-michie-tic-tac-toe-machine-learning/
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Teacher Training On: Programming & Computational Thinking

http://www.criced.tsukuba.ac.jp/math/apec/apec2020/presentations/12Feb/16-Wahid_Y2020.pdf

40

Chapter 3.
Recommendations for Curriculum Reform on Statistical Thinking

Orlando González

Masami Isoda

Assumption

University

University, Thailand

Tsukuba, Japan

Roberto Araya
of University of Chile,
Chile

In this chapter we propose recommendations and exemplars for a curriculum on Computational
Thinking for the Digital Economy (Isoda, 2020). Statistical Thinking has been enhanced since 1990’s
and here we discuss how different is the statistical thinking for big data and AI. We will discuss ourviews of statistical thinking in relation to Big Data and statistical thinking in relation to the subjective
probability running behind the AI system and them, conclude recommendations.
INTRODUCTION: STATISTICAL THINKING ON THE ERA of BIG DATA
The interest in big data is growing exponentially in today’s society. Commercial insights, government
initiatives and even research’s calls, all seem to be focused on exploiting the potential of technology
to capture and analyze massive amounts of data in increasingly powerful ways. Big data, that is, datathat are too big for standard database software to process, is everywhere. For some, big data represents
a paradigm shift in the ways that we understand and study our world, and at the very least it is seen as
a way to better utilize and creatively analyze information for public and private benefit.
The concept of big data “refers to datasets whose size is beyond the ability of typical database softwaretools to capture, store, manage, and analyze” (Manyika et al., 2011, p.1). Additionally, big data is often
associated with key characteristics that go beyond the question of size, namely the 5 Vs: volume,
velocity, variety, veracity and value (Storey & Song, 2017). Big data is dispersed among various
platforms that operate with different standards, providers and degrees of access (Ferguson, 2012). For
example, a lot of work in big data focuses on Twitter, the blogosphere, and search engine queries. Allof these activities are not undertaken equally by the whole population, which raises concerning issues
around the question of whose data traces will be analyzed using big data.
There are also a number of practical issues related to working with big data. These include, among
others, issues we cannot afford to ignore, such as implications for the training of future teachers
regarding handling and analysis of big data.
Due to the fact that big data has recently become mainstream in many research fields, including
education, it is important to discuss and answer the following questions:
In order to function effectively in a society driven by big data and digital economy, what are thenecessary processes of statistical thinking required to handle big data?
How can we revise current curriculum frameworks of statistical thinking to incorporate big data forthe digital economy?

41

How can we incorporate core ideas of big data for the digital economy into the high school curriculum?
What are plausible instructional activities (exemplar applications) for teaching the fundamental ideasof statistics while fostering statistical thinking for big data and the digital economy?
1. NATURE OF BIG DATABig Data is produced by Data Science which is not the same as Statistics on the Neyman-Pearson
context. It is not necessary that data is given to begin statistical analysis and inference. On the Data
Science, it produces the new data by connecting no related data statistically and analyzed it by using
mathematics which includes Bayesian Statistics with intuitive probability. The followings are the 5Vs
to explain the nature of big data.
Volume: This refers to data at rest. Datasets with sizes in the order of terabytes, petabytes andzettabytes.
Variety: This refers to the many forms (e.g., text, images, videos, audio files, emails) and sources (e.g.,
spreadsheets, databases, social media and monitoring devices) of data.
Velocity: This refers to data in motion: the speed at which data flows in from sources (e.g., real timestreaming).
Veracity: This refers to data in doubt. Depending on its origin, processing technologies, and collection
methods, data can have biases and inaccuracies attached, which need to be identified and accountedfor.
Value: This refers to turning data into profit. Just having big data is of no use unless we can turn it
into value.
On the result of data science, currently maps are used for driving and shopping. Even though numerical
data is running and connected behind, the interface does not show it. However users are indirectly
using it by operating visible and manipulative interface. Even though different data is connected, if
users could not recognize their reasoning is based on biased data, they believe the result without any
doubt. Users of Big Data must have, in this context, statistics education which is necessary for all usersof BIG Data to develop the critical skills such as worry questions (Gal, I., .2002). However, statisticalthinking is not limited to critical skills to doubt the using of Big data on the era of AI. What are thenecessary components of statistical thinking on the era?
2. FRAMEWORK FOR STATISTICAL THINKING
Formal Neyman-Pearson Statistics usually applies formal statistical models/theories for given data
sets such as statistical tests by using Normal Distribution. Exploratory Data Analysis proposed by
Tukey, J.W., a novel economy medalist, prefers the statistics for analyzing data sets to summarize theirmain characteristics with visible representations to know what the data can tell us beyond the formal
modeling or hypothesis testing task. These statistical approaches are the methods of analysis for the42data sets. However, data sets on the data science are unstable to apply Neyman-Pearson Statistics
because they are not fixed data sets. Data sets of Big Data usually change such as continuously adding,seeking, mining and connecting. This nature extends statistical thinking from the current statistics at
schools to unknown era. For example, Bayesian Statistics is not currently treated at the high schoollevel but are usually used as an alternative approach for Neyman-Pearson Statistics on the context ofData Sciences. By considering the current issues, we would like to propose the following curriculum
reform framework for Statistical Thinking (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Curriculum Framework for Statistical Thinking on InMside
On figure 1, any content of subject can be seen from the perspectives of Data Sciences, NeymanPearson Statistics and Bayesian Statistics. Thus, any school subject can be reconsidered from theseperspective. Even though figure 1 can be applied any school subject, in the following discussion, we
mainly focus on the statistics, mathematics and informatics curriculum.
In relation to current existing school statistics curriculum, many researchers (e.g., Wild & Pfannkuch,f1999; adelMas, 2002; Watson, 2017) consider statistical thinking as the practice of statistics through43

the enactment of the different thought processes involved in statistical problem solving and statisticalinvestigations. For us, in this digital era, statistical thinking processes do not follow the Problem-PlanData-Analysis-Conclusion (PPDAC) cycle (Wild & Pfannkuch, 1999) anymore due to the shift in theway we work with data sets with the arrival of big data analytics. In fact, the PPDAC cycle is aquestion-then-answer research method, focused on gathering data through planned processes with apurpose, chosen on statistical grounds to justify certain types of inferences and conclusions. However,in times of big data, this is actually a weakness of the PPDAC cycle because most of the available data
are opportunistic (happenstance or “found”) data (including “big data”): huge amounts of data alreadycollected by others and hosted somewhere. Nowadays, many companies have data teams exploringlarge sets of raw opportunistic data, looking for new connections and identifying significant
correlations, while refining their analysis until they arrive at valuable understandings. This approachreverses the question-then-answer process of the PPDAC cycle. It starts with strong data-first foranswering question and then works backwards to find the questions that should have been asked.
PPDAC cycle also includes Exploratory Data Analysis in the process of Analysis.
On statistics education research, there are up-to-date statistical thinking process designed to consider
these criticisms to the PPDAC cycle. By doing so, in the context of using Big Data which has thenature of 5Vs, we came up with the following key phases on handling big data for the statisticalthinking process to describe how a person engages in statistical thinking. The proposed key phases
explain statistical thinking process for handling Big Data as a cognitive process which are comprisedof the following five phases:
Patterns and relationships from data: Look for patterns and relationships within the data based ona particular interest.
Questions: Pose critical and worry questions, in order to find plausible explanations to the patterns
and relationships found.
Objectives: Set objectives related to the posed questions, in order to analyze the data.
Data mining: Re-examine the data according to the objectives, explore the old and new data sources,
or introduce new variables for consideration. Data mining can be data-oriented, explanation-oriented,
or future-oriented.
Understanding and/or designing: Provide ideas for new activities based on the understanding of thepast, and design plans and strategies for the future based on the results from the data mining.
These phases are not necessary in this order like Exploratory Thinking process in the PPDAC Cycle.
In order to describe figure 1, we illustrate two exemplars to explain the phases for exploring Big Dataand the ways of Bayesian Statistical Approach in the following sections. We do not illustrate NeymanPearson Statistical Approach here because it currently exists in the school curriculum.
1. EXEMPLAR APPLICATION OF THE FRAMEWORK: AGING POPULATION ISSUES44

IN APEC MEMBER ECONOMIESFor the purpose of exemplifying this framework, let us suppose that we are interested in exploring
issues related to aging population, which is a concerning issue in many societies, such as the Japanese.
So, we may check the worldwide trend of web searches for terms such as “social security” and “nursinghome”, focusing on APEC economies.
For this example, we will use the website “Google Trends” (https://trends.google.com), which is an
open-access online platform for big data that enables creative discovery from information on how
frequent a given search term was entered into Google's search engine in real-time or within given timeand date constraints.
Patterns and relationships from data
Using “Google Trends”, we looked for patterns and relationships within the data hosted in the platform,
based on our interest in aging population issues on APEC member economies. Then, by checking theworldwide trend of web searches for terms related to aging population, such as “social security” and“nursing home”, we will be able to identify possible patterns and relationships in the data regardingthese terms. Figure 2 shows the evolution of the worldwide search trends for “social security” and“nursing home” in the past 15 years.

Figure 2: Evolution of the worldwide Google search trends for “social security” (in blue) and“nursing home” (in red) in the past 15 years.
Now, let us focus on the online search trends for the terms “social security” and “nursing home”
focusing on APEC member economies. In the top row of Figure 3, we can see that Japan, Canada andthe US were APEC member economies in which online searches for the term “nursing home” werehigher in comparison to the term “social security” in the last year. On the other hand, in the bottom
row of Figure 3, we can see that Chile, Peru and the South Korea were APEC member economies inwhich online searches for the term “social security” were higher in comparison to the term “nursinghome” in the last year.

45

Figure 3: Percentage comparison of Google searches for the terms “social security” (in blue)and “nursing home” (in red) in six APEC member economies in 2018.
Questions
From the visual representations obtained by using Google Trends, it is possible to pose a series ofquestions regarding the statistical information being displayed, in order to find explanations to thepatterns and relationships found. These questions can support the process of critical evaluation of
statistical messages and lead to the creation of more data representations, informed interpretations andjudgments.
Some questions that might be posed for this example are the following:
Why do some member economies (such as Japan, Canada and USA) seem to show considerably
more interest on “nursing home” than on “social security”?
Why do some member economies (such as Chile, Peru and South Korea) seem to show
considerably more interest on “social security” than on “nursing home”?
What are the reasons for the decreasing and increasing trends of the graphs?
What could be the behavior of these trends for individual APEC member economies (such as theones mentioned in Figure 3) in the next decade?
In member economies such as Japan, Canada and USA, where it seems to be more interested on“nursing home” than on “social security”, what is the behavior of related queries, such as “nurse”?
In member economies such as Chile, Peru and South Korea, where it seems to be more interested
on “social security” than on “nursing home”, what is the behavior of related queries, such as “tax”
or “pension”?
How is the social security policy in member economies showing considerably more interest on“nursing home” than on “social security” (such as Japan, Canada and USA)?
How is the current state of nursing home services provided to the elderly in member economies
showing considerably more interest on “social security” than on “nursing home” (such as Chile,
Peru and South Korea)?
Objectives

46

Now, from the posed questions, we are able to set clear objectives. In fact, each objective should be
associated to at least one question. In this example, some objectives stemming from the questions
above are the following:1.

To look for and identify the reasons why some APEC member economies seem to show
considerably more or less interest on “nursing home” than on “social security”.

2.

To determine the behavior for individual APEC member economies regarding individual queries,
such as the mentioned above.

3.

To predict the trends of web searches for the terms “nursing home” and “social security” in APEC
member economies in the next decade.

4.

To determine the behavior of related queries (e.g., “nurse” for member economies showing moreinterest on “nursing home”, and “tax” or “pension” in member economies showing more intereston “social security”) in APEC member economies with a particular search trend.

Data mining
During this phase of the statistical thinking process, addressing the objectives set in the previous phasewill lead to a re-examination of the data, from which new insights and knowledge discovery will
emerge from three types of data mining: big data-oriented, explanation-oriented, and future-oriented
data mining.
For the purpose of exemplifying this phase, let us address the Objective 1 (i.e., to look for and identify
the reasons why some APEC member economies seem to show considerably more or less interest on“nursing home” than on “social security”). In the case of Japan and other APEC member economies,
the main reason can be the current structure of the population pyramid (explanation-oriented data
mining). In order to construct plausible explanations from the population pyramids, we need to selectand transform the necessary data into the required form (big data-oriented data mining), as presented
in Figure 4.
So, if we look at the population pyramids of the APEC member economies in the top row of Figure 3,
we can see different structures among the member economies, regardless the fact that online searches
in 2018 for the term “nursing home” were higher in Japan, Canada and the US, in comparison to theterm “social security” (see Figure 4).
In Japan, we can observe a large proportion of the population are close to or over retirement age. In
Canada, we can observe a large proportion of the population are close to retirement age. In the US,
this phenomenon is not an issue, because a large proportion of the population are below 50 years-old,
far from retirement age. Thus, plausible explanations of why some APEC member economies seem toshow considerably more or less interest on “nursing home” than on “social security” may vary from
economy to economy. In the cases of Japan and Canada, a large group of elderly people who are close
to retirement, or already retired, might be planning to live in a nursing home. In the case of the US,
young people, starting to make a live by themselves, might be looking information on nursing homes

47

for their elderly parents.

Figure 4: Population pyramids in 2017 for Japan, Canada and the USA.
From these hypotheses, we might make inferences, imagining the future of “nursing homes” in Japan,
Canada and the US (future-oriented data mining), using big data to support our plausible explanations
for the future to come (see Figure 5).

Figure 5: Number of nursing homes in Japan (red line, 2005–2014) and United States (blueline, 2000–2016).
Understanding and/or designing
From the discovered knowledge, inferences and plausible explanations generated in the previous phase,
we have gained valuable understanding about the topics of interest (“nursing home” and “social
security”). This understanding provides us with ideas to develop new activities related to the topics orvariables of interest. Understanding the past allows us to design for the future, all supported on thedata mining results.
In our exemplar application, from the understanding of rising need for nursing homes and nurses inJapan, someone could design business plans targeting senior citizens: in-home care services, seniorcitizen transportation services, e-commerce store for the elderly, wheelchair manufacturing, foreign
nurse recruitment agency, and so on. In the USA, most of these ideas (e.g., a foreign nurse recruitment
agency to provide care service for the elderly) will not work everywhere, but could be successful instates such as Oregon and Virginia, as shown in Figure 6.

48

Figure 6: Interest in Google searches for the term “nurse” in United States in the last 15 years.
2. STATISTICAL THINKING FOR USING BIG DATA
In times of big data, artificial intelligence and digital economy, statistical thinking has evolved from a
traditional question-then-answer analysis, through which we ask questions and then collect andanalyze the data to arrive at a conclusion that can be used to make decisions. Now, we should use amore disruptive and creative approach, which starts with data-first answers from the examination ofopportunistic data (which is data that just happen to be available in electronic form because they haveaccumulated for other reasons by other people), and then works backwards to find the questions thatshould have been asked.
Under this scenario, previous frameworks of statistical thinking, such as the PPDAC cycle, is not
appropriate to explain the richness and complexity of thinking involved in real-world statisticalinvestigations dealing with big data. On that regard, we developed a new framework for statisticalthinking, comprised of five phases or cognitive processes (i.e., patterns and relationships from data,
questions, objectives, data mining, and understanding and/or designing), in order to appropriately
describe how a person engages in statistical thinking while handling big data. An exemplar applicationof the framework illustrated the richness and complexity of thinking involved in handling big datawith Google Trends, exploring issues related to aging population, by checking the worldwide trend of
web searches for terms such as “social security” and “nursing home”, focusing on APEC member
economies. From this application, it was possible to identify member economies with similar andcontrasting characteristics, and classify APEC economies based on such characteristics.
Although we have illustrated our proposed new framework for statistical thinking with an exemplar
application, issues regarding how we can incorporate core ideas of big data for the digital economy
into the high school curriculum of each APEC economy, as well as what plausible instructional
activities (exemplar applications) can be designed for teaching the fundamental ideas of statistics while
fostering statistical thinking for big data and the digital economy, are expected to be fundamental
outcomes from the discussion of the current document among all the participants to this APECTsukuba International Conference 2019.

49

3. Exemplar of Bayesian Statistics for COVID-19
For explanation of a part Bayesian Statistics of the curriculum reform framework in Figure 1, we
would like to illustrate the case of checking the disease of COVID-19 by using Bayesian Theorem(Suematsu, M., to appear). If we use Bayesian Theorem, we can consider the future by postulating the
unknown probability as subjective even though the data is not pre-requested.
How Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test is appropriate and meaningful to check COVID-19?
Events for positive test results are A, events for negative tests are B, events for disease (infected) are
C, and events for not disease (uninfected) are D.
Sensitivity: The percentage of people who are sick and tested positive:
Specificity: Percentage of people who are not ill and tested negative:= ( | )

= ( | )

When the test result is positive, the probability of being infected is PCR (T), and when the test result
is negative, the probability of being uninfected is PCR (F).
If we apply this to Bayes’ Theorem, we got the following:( )= ( | )==( | ) ( )( )( | ) ( )( | ) ( )+ ( | ) ( )
=

× ( )

× Ｐ( ) + 1－

× ( )( )= ( | )===( | ) ( )( )( | ) ( )( | ) ( )+ ( | ) ( )

(1－

× ( )

) × Ｐ( ) +× ( )Tentatively, we set the following condition.
= 0.7，= 0.99And set the prior probability for events for infected is C: If we assume( )= ，

50

Then, the prior probability for events for not infected is D.
( )＝ 1 −Then, we get the following graphs; Prior probability distribution (Figure 7)( ): the probability of being infected( )Figure 7. Graphs of Probabilities PCR (T) as Test Positive for diseased and PCR (F) as Test
Negative for not diseased
Implication from the graphs (Figure 7)
PCR (T) deteriorates when the prior probability P (C) is low. For example, when P (C) = 0.1, theprobability of being infected is less than 90% even if the test result is positive. In addition, PCR (F)deteriorates when the prior probability P (C) is high. For example, when P (C) = 0.9, the probabilityof being uninfected even if the test result is negative is about 25%.
Further analysis
False Test-Positive Rate P (D | A): Probability of being uninfected even with a positive test
False Test-Negative Rate P (C | B): Probability of being infected with a negative test
P (D | A): Positive test results must be isolated, filling up the number of beds even though they are notinfected.
( | ) = 1－

( | ) = 1－

( )( | ) = 1－

( )P (C | B): If the result of the test is negative, the infection may spread to the surroundings without
taking measures such as masks with confidence.
( | ) = 1－

51

( | )

( | )

Figure 8. Graphs of the False Test-Positive Rate P (D | A) and False Test-Negative Rate P (C | B):
P (D | A) worsens when the prior probability P (C) is low. For example, when P (C) = 0.1, theprobability of being infected is about 12% even if the test result is positive. In P (D | A), the priorprobability P (C) is high and deteriorated. For example, when P (C) = 0.9, the probability of being
infected is about 73% even if the test result is negative.
Neyman-Pearson Statistics used given data to analyze. Bayesian Statistics tentatively set the unknown
probability and reason by using Bayesian Theorem. The probability is unknown yet reasoning is still
possible. Neyman-Pearson statistical inference, statistical test, are done by distribution however
Bayesian statistics are used for likelihood for comparison. The comparison (greater or less) of thevalues of likelihood is the way for making decision by decision making tree on AI (see Chapter 2,
Exemplar 3 and 4). On the decision making on AI system, likelihood (or odds) can be obtained fromprobability functions such as the graphs like Figure 7 and 8, instead of statistical text based on
statistical model distributions. It is very much different ways of reasoning because Neyman-Pearsion
statistical inference is only possible when the data set was given at first.
4. Recommendations for development of Statistical Thinking
On the curriculum for high school level, we would like to propose figure 1 as for the reform framework
for any subject of teaching. Here, we finalize the recommendations to develop statistical thinking. It
includes traditional statistical thinking based on Neyman Pearson Statistics and problem solving
through PPDAC cycle is necessary to critique the approach for the big data, Neyman Pearson Statistics
is necessary to learn critical discussion for the data. On the other hands, Data Sciences and Bayesian
Statistics are necessary for the handling Big Data on the creative inquiry to produce new findings andideas such as predicting the future. On figure 1, exploratory data handling includes the five phases of52data handling and using of Bayes’ Theorem as well as Exploratory Data Analysis. Here, we describe
recommendation and considerable points for secondary school level however we do not specify thename of academic subject such as mathematics or informatics because statistical thinking can be
developed and applicable for any subjects. We specify the topic to one of three pillars on figure 1 as
the most related pillar however please note any subject can be seen from three pillars.
In relation to Neyman Pearson Statistics
Neyman Pearson Statistics is academic subject and existed as the school curriculum content. Formal
statistical inference was embedded into the school curriculum at every economy. Law of large number
bridges sampling and variability and mathematical probability for part whole relation. Statisticalinference such as statistical test under the normal distribution and binominal distributions. Ongoing
curriculum reform, informal statistical inference has been enhanced to embed prior exploration of data
before teaching formal statistical inference in relation to PPDAC cycle. It enable students to learn themeaning and object/entity of statistical inference before learning formal inference. Because of formal
statistical inference is not compulsory the opportunity of informal statistical inference is theopportunity for all students what statistical thinking is on Neyman Pearson Approach. Statisticalmodeling is also enhanced in relation to visualization with computer as well as the problem solving
with PPDAC cycle.
In relation to Data Science
Data Science itself needs higher mathematics and skills for programing which learned at university
level. At high school level, students need to experience data handling in relation to five phases:
Patterns and relationships from data, Questions, Objectives, Data mining, Understanding and/or
designing. Those phases can be learned any subject such as social study and so on. Basic skills to use
computer on the web is necessary. Further skills to use scatter diagram is also need to be learned. At
the high school level, students also need to learn odds, part-part relationship to develop decision
making tree (see chapter 2, exemplar 3&4).
In relation to Bayesian Statistics
Bayesian Statistics is useful for the era of Big Data and AI. Bayes’ theorem and the treatment like theexemplar of COVID-19 is necessary to learn at the high school level. Probability function andlikelihood need to be introduced. At the same time, the idea of likelihood will be introduced for
decision making tree from the middle school as odds which is discussed as part-part relationshipinstead of mathematical probability as for part-whole relationship.
Necessary Preparation at the middle and primary school levels
For introducing these content at high school level, we also needs to re-consider the middle and primaryschool curriculum.
The first issue at the middle school levels is visualized modeling for considering the various viability
with computer which produces the object of mathematization at the high school. Various visible

53

models are histogram, boxplot, stem-and-leaf display and so on. Students needs to learn them
depending on the way of data handling with using computer from the middle school such as howchange the mode depending on the range for histogram. Representative value is necessary but
usefulness of it can be learned through data handling with computer such as the comparison ofvariability of distribution with the way how to explain it.
Second issue is introducing the idea of odds and probability from primary school level. Probability
has been avoided because it was recognized as the matter of Gambling however the idea of odds (partpart relationship) and probability (part-whole relationship ) has been used on our life in the current era.
At the upper grade of primary school, students usually study the ratio and rate. Ratio and rate is a key
for visual representation of statistics. From the primary level, students need the opportunity to learn
the situation of decision making by using rate and ratio with its visible representations such as Bandgraph.
These are recommendation for the curriculum reform to develop statistical thinking on the big data.
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