Using united nations data in the training of teachers to teach

In this paper we describe a workshop aimed at prospective secondary and high school teachers in Spain, which was based on social data taken from the United Nations web server. These data were used to evaluate and increase the teachers’ knowledge to teach statistics in secondary and high school. Visualization and analysis of the data was based on simple tools, including spreadsheets, Internet applets, as well as a variety of multivariate display tools available in the United Nations public Data Explorer. Contexts such as life expectancy and gender inequality helped to increase the interest in social data and statistical data analysis in the workshop participants.