An Investigation on the Conceptual Understanding of the Standard Deviation of Fresh Undergraduate Students

This study investigated and evaluated Ghanaian fresh undergraduate students’ conceptual understanding of the standard deviation based on their knowledge gained from the Ghanaian Senior High School (SHS) core and elective mathematics curricula. This study was performed by grouping three consecutive batches of fresh undergraduate students of the Department of Mathematics Education of the University of Education, Winneba, Ghana and cumulative results were collected and interpreted by proper survey among them. Though a test item was the main instrument for collecting data, student’s responses were not scored quantitatively. Only the themes running through students’ responses were of interest to the researcher. Results indicated that fresh undergraduate students do not have a conceptual understanding of the standard deviation.