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 … [Read more...] about Lesson Plan: Are Female Hurricanes Deadlier Than Male Hurricanes?
Lesson Plans
Lesson Plan: The Egg Roulette Game
By Amanda Walker (Grades 9-12+) This lesson, published in August of 2017, uses a probability game and computer simulations to explore the law of large numbers, conditional events, sampling distributions, and the central limit theorem. Video clips from "The Tonight Show" are shown to students in which Jimmy Fallon plays the egg roulette game with celebrities. Students play … [Read more...] about Lesson Plan: The Egg Roulette Game
Lesson Plan: First Day Statistics Activity—Grouping Qualitative Data
By R.B. Campbell (Grades 6-8, 9-12+) This activity, published in April of 2014, provides a foundation for distinguishing between qualitative (categorical) and quantitative data and how they can be summarized and analyzed (a topic encountered early in a statistics course). This lesson illustrates how categorical data can be grouped to make the data comprehensible. It also … [Read more...] about Lesson Plan: First Day Statistics Activity—Grouping Qualitative Data
Lesson Plan: EllipSeeIt—Visualizing Strength and Direction of Correlation
By Miguel Olvera and Rafael Diaz (Grades 6–12+) Originally published in February 2017, this lesson focuses on correlation as a way of measuring the strength and direction of a linear association between two numerical variables. After reviewing concepts of bivariate data sets, their graphical representations through scatterplots, and the meaning of a linear association, … [Read more...] about Lesson Plan: EllipSeeIt—Visualizing Strength and Direction of Correlation
Lesson Plan: Odd or Even? The Addition and Complement Principles of Probability
By Wendy Weber, Carrie Even, and Susannah Weaver (Grades 9-12+) Originally published November 2015, this lesson engages students in an exploration activity and a class discussion. After completing this lesson, students will be able to determine when events are mutually exclusive, and then use the Addition Principle to calculate the probability of mutually exclusive and … [Read more...] about Lesson Plan: Odd or Even? The Addition and Complement Principles of Probability
Lesson Plan: You Will Soon Analyze Categorical Data (Classifying Fortune Cookie Fortunes)
By Mary Richardson (Grades 9-12+) Originally published in May 2014, students will have the opportunity to collect and explore real data using two brands of fortune cookies. Students will open each brand of fortune cookie and classify their fortunes into one of four categories. Students will then construct a two-way frequency table to display their data and investigate their … [Read more...] about Lesson Plan: You Will Soon Analyze Categorical Data (Classifying Fortune Cookie Fortunes)
Lesson Plan: What Fits?
By Anna Bargagliotti and Stephanie Casey (Grades 6-12+) Originally published in February 2013, this activity has students explore what a line of best fit is and where a line of best fit should be placed on a scatterplot of data with a linear association. This is done through students’ completion of an activity investigating the relationship between the drop height of a golf … [Read more...] about Lesson Plan: What Fits?
Lesson Plan: Bubble Trouble!
By Peter Banwarth (Grades 6-12+) Originally published in May 2014, this lesson has the following two goals: In this lesson, students will determine if the size of a bubble blown in water is affected by different additions to the water. Students will design an activity to explore this and have fun blowing bubbles. They will use numeric summaries—including the mean and … [Read more...] about Lesson Plan: Bubble Trouble!
Lesson Plan: Confidence in Salaries in Petroleum Engineering
By Susan A. Peters and AnnaMarie Conner (Grades 9–12+) Originally published in October 2016, this lesson introduces students to bootstrapping methods for making inferences about a population parameter using a randomly selected sample from the population. Students use random samples of salaries for petroleum engineering graduates—graduates employed in the profession earning … [Read more...] about Lesson Plan: Confidence in Salaries in Petroleum Engineering
Lesson Plan: The Gumball Machine
By Alexander White, M. Alejandra Sorto, and Rini Oktavia (Grades K–12+) Originally published in April 2014, this lesson gives students the opportunity to explore and discuss the variation that occurs in sampling. Students are asked to imagine a gumball machine contains 1 red, 2 green, 3 yellow, and 4 blue gumballs that were thoroughly mixed before they were put into the … [Read more...] about Lesson Plan: The Gumball Machine