“This was the best money I have ever spent on a teaching tool.” ~ a teacher in Wisconsin
Students calculate averages using negative temperatures.
First, students note the average monthly highs in the North and South Poles.
Then, they graph those temperatures on a multi-line graph.
Next, they find the highs and lows and calculate the annual temperature range at each location.
Then, they calculate the average temperature in each season for both poles.
Finally, they communicate their Polar Weather Report.
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 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, now armed with data about five caffeinated beverages, will survey a set of peers and/or adults to uncover misconceptions about caffeine.
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 decide when mean vs median best summarizes data.
First, they decide which works better, mean or median when Bill Gates enters the group.
Next, students calculate the mean and median when Bill Gates has $5000 and $10 000.
Now, they determine how low their final test score can be to still earn a 90% in a class.
After revealing that there’s no way to not get an A when the median is used, students pick their one data to analyze with mean and median.