Students will analyze graphs showing how three countries’ populations have aged over 70 years.
First, students notice changes in the age of the United States’ population from 1950 to 2020.
Next, they look at the US, Japan, and Afghanistan’s age graphs together, finding similarities and differences.
Finally, they consider what unique needs each population would have in 2020 and create a business idea to serve that need.
Students will compare the population of a country with that country’s total Olympic medal count and look for patterns.
Students pick 5 to 7 countries and look up the populations and counts.
Next, they calculate medals per million for each country.
Finally, they analyze their data and look for patterns. Would those patterns continue across other countries?
Students will create and analyze a graph showing countries’ winter and summer Olympic medals.
Students pick a handful of countries and then predict which ones will be stronger in winter or summer or about even.
Next, they find the summer and winter medal totals for each country.
Then, they create a graph and plot each country using the medal data as coordinates.
Finally, they check their predictions and then give each country an award based on their medal counts.
Students will analyze data about a movie series, create graphs, note trends, and make a recommendation: should we make another movie in this series?
Students select a series of 5-10 movies and look up their box office returns as well as critical ratings.
Next, they adjust each movie’s box office returns for inflation so that we can fairly compare the films.
Now, students will create a scatter plot to look for a relationship between the movies’ financial and critical success.
Students will note trends and outliers and then make a prediction about how well another movie in the series would do.
Next, students will make graphs showing the critical ratings and box office returns of the series over time.
Finally, they will make a recommendation: should we make another movie in this series?
Students will compare the costs of living, wages, and quality of life in three different cities and then decide which is right for them.
Students will learn about cost of living and pick a third city to investigate.
Then, they’ll get a job and look up wages in the different cities.
They’ll convert their information into monthly amounts.
Next, students will consider the “Quality of Life” in each of the cities.
They’ll analyze the “Cost vs Fun” of their cities by creating a scatter plot.
Finally, they’ll decide which city is best for them and develop a persuasive argument.
Students will investigate the intriguing question: does a donut or a salad have more sugar? Using an image from an article, they’ll determine if the photo is true or misleading, how they might add to it, and how they could create their own version.
Students rank how much they trust the donut image.
Then they check the math, using ratios to determine if the original image is accurate.
They choose three new food items to compare, looking up the sugar content, then creating donut ratios for each.
Finally, they redo the original image, choosing a new nutrient to use as the comparison.
Students will update their original belief of how much they trust the image.
Students will analyze advertisements about caffeine and create a public service announcement to communicate their findings.
Students will analyze their advertisements using this worksheet, identifying the audience for each ad, then deciding which ad was most misleading.
They’ll create a Public Service Announcement to promote a better understanding of caffeine.
What do people know about the amount of caffeine in common beverages?
Students conduct a survey, asking people to predict the amount of caffeine in each drink.
They find the average of their survey responses
Then graph the real data against the survey data.
Finally, students will identify misconceptions and infer what might cause those misconceptions.
Students will investigate the amount of caffeine in different drinks and analyze the data.
Optionally read this article from The Atlantic about caffeine and increased ER visits. Students will brainstorm questions about caffeine.
Students look up the caffeine content of five different drinks and calculate how many one could have before it became dangerous.
Analyze that data using any method you’d like. This is left open so that you can assign an appropriate task for your kids’ abilities: bar graphs, measures of central tendency, equivalence with ratios, etc.
Students will work with equivalence to find meals and activities that equal the calories in one popular meal from a restaurant.
First, students will pick a restaurant and then find how many calories are recommended per day.
Then they’ll create a common meal from that restaurant and calculate the calories in that meal compared to the recommended calories per day.
Now they’ll create several interesting equivalences, showing how the calories in their meal equal the calories in other meals or the calories spent on activities.
They use their information to design a parody ad.
Bonus: They are now hired by the restaurant to create an ad for a low-calorie meal.
In this math project, students will design and furnish suites and rooms in a hotel. Then they will use their talents to sell their hotel in a presentation.
First, your students will plan the big picture of their hotel: what will make it special?
Next, students go shopping for furniture to fill their rooms and suites. My class started with IKEA’s catalog, but students liked to use other shops as well.
They’ll break their spending down into five categories of their choosing.
Finally, they’ll determine their hotel’s potential profitability.
Students use authentic data to determine how much money they’d have if they sold an original iPod compared to selling an equivalent amount of Apple stock.
Introduce the prompt: What if we bought Apple stock instead of the original iPod? How much money would we have if we sold them both today? Ask “what do we need to know?” to answer this. Students will find this information online.
Students compute the number of Apple shares they could have bought on October 23, 2001. Then they compute the amount of money those shares would be worth now.
They create three interesting ways to express the two amounts: one using a pure math skill (percents, ratio, difference) and two using equivalence (how many Big Macs, tickets to Disneyland, or PlayStations could you buy with the two values).
Students repeat their investigation for another product or company (or twice if you’d like!).
They finally create a big idea about investing vs spending, backing it up with evidence from their research. Their final product can take the form of an essay, presentation, video, website, etc.