The University of Massachusetts, Amherst is developing a new type of data analysis software tool, "Tinker Plots," for instructional use in data analysis and statistics in middle schools. Tinker Plots offers a construction set rather than a menu of ready-made graph types and helps orient students and teachers to the inquiry-driven nature of data analysis. The development of Tinker Plots is done in collaboration with teams that developed comprehensive instructional materials for middle school mathematics. Revisions of some units of these instructional materials are being done in order to support the classroom testing of the software.
