By Mary Richardson
(Grades 6-8, 9-12+) Originally published in June of 2014, this lesson uses a data set partially discussed in the article “Female Hurricanes Are Deadlier Than Male Hurricanes,” written by Kiju Junga, Sharon Shavitta, Madhu Viswanathana, and Joseph M. Hilbed. The data set contains archival data on actual fatalities caused by hurricanes in the United States between 1950 and 2012. Students analyze and explore this hurricane data to determine whether the data supports the claim that female-named hurricanes are more deadly than male-named hurricanes.
Keywords: Grades 6-8, 9-12+, Mean, Standard Deviation, Median, Outlier, Five-Number-Summary, Comparative Boxplots