Benchmark 9B
The Mathematical World: Symbolic Relationships
Grades 6-8, page 219

Mathematical statements can be used to describe how one quantity changes when another changes. Rates of change can be computed from differences in magnitudes and vice versa.
 

NSES Content Standard A 
Science as Inquiry: Abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry
Grades 5-8, page 145
Think critically and logically to make the relationships between evidence and explanations. Thinking critically about evidence includes deciding what evidence should be used and accounting for anomalous data. Specifically, students should be able to review data from a simple experiment, summarize the data, and form a logical argument about the cause-effect relationships in the experiment. Students should begin to state some explanations in terms of the relationship between two or more variables.
See also the general discussion in Unifying Concepts and Processes: Constancy, change, and measurement