Wednesday

Daily Class Exit Blog Answer at least one of the following: 1. Describe something you learned 2. Questions you have or something you would like to learn more about 3. Describe connections to classroom practice

Activity 1:
Read and discuss

Activity 2:
The followingg file has information on life expectancies for a sample of 22 countries. It also lists the number of people per television set in each country. Open the file and answer the following: a) Which of the countries listed has the fewest people per television set? Which has the most? What are those numbers? b) Use Fathom to produce a scatterplot of life expectancy vs. people per television set. Does there appear to be an association between the two variables? Elaborate briefly. c) Have Fathom calculate the correlation coefficient (r) between the two variables d) Since the association is so strong, the UN decides to increase the number of tv's sent to countries with lower life expectancy. They argue that this will lower the number of people per television set and thus increase life expectancy. Comment on this argument.

Activity 3:
Increases in gas prices over the last several years may be a contributing factor to auto manufacturers focus on improving gas mileage. To help us become more informed about the variety of vehicles on the market, the following file is a collection of 41 vehicles manufactured in 2006. 1. Open the file and review the data in the table. Generate at least four different questions that you could explore by analyzing this data set. 2. Describe two classroom situations, one for which it would be beneficial to use a pre-collected data set and one for which students should be collecting data themselves. Provide a rationale for the benefits in each situation. 3. Using the attribute CITY produce a dot plot, box plot and histogram and place them side by side in the white space. Compare the representations you created. What characteristics of the distribution are more noticable or are hidden in each of the representations? What is a typical range of City mpg for these autos? 4. How can examining a distribution using three different linked graphical representations be a help or hindrance for students? 5. How could students use the box plot to describe the center and spread of the city mpg? 6. Do either of the measures of center, mean, or median best represent a typical city mgp for these autos? Defend your choice or provide an alternate way of representing the City mpg. 7. Click and drag the attribute engine type over the data to overlay a categorical variable on the Dot Plot. What does it tell you about the city mpg for each of the three engine types? 8. How can overlaying a categorical attribute on a dot plot of a numerical attribute influence students' ability to examine data? 9. Right click and remove the engine type from the graph. Then drag the engine type attribute to the y-axis. What similarities and differences do you notice about the distributions of City mpg for each of the engine types? 10. Examine the location of the mean and median in the three distributions (you can plot them on there). Explain the relative location of hte mean and median to each other in the three distributions.