In article , Robyn Kozierok wrote:
Have you as a parent ever heard of a stem and leaf plot?

From where did you learn about this? At what age?

Not until my son learned it (and I have a math degree, fwiw)

I learned about stem-and-leaf plots about 1985 from Edward Tufte's
beautiful book "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information".
I did NOT get stem-and-leaf plots in school or college, but I was in
theoretical math and computer science, neither of which are very
concerned with the display of data.

I routinely use stem-and-leaf plots to present histograms of grades to
my classes. I generally have to explain them the first time I use
them, as they still are not commonly known to college stuents.

They are a handy, but rather minor tool in data display. I would not
consider them an essential part of elementary education.


--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.