The Box and The Whisker

Today in my math class my class learned a new lesson and that lesson was Box and Whisker plot. I'm so glad that we learned this today because well A) I've see box and Whisker plots before and never really knew how to read them and B) they're very easy to read and do. So everyone wins (well I think.) Box and Whisker plots are good to use if you're comparing data to one another. The activity we did in class to introduce  the class to box and whisker plot was a worksheet. With this worksheet it had a box and whisker plot already made and under it had questions that we had to answer. This activity was a great activity to warm up to box and whisker plots. For example one of the questions on the worksheet ask what was the lower quartile. Instead of telling us, my teacher ask us what we thought quartile and we talk about it and said we thought of quarters. Quartile represents 25% of the data.

This activity and lesson was easy for me I just understood it right away. It just made sense not like others lesson I've learned were I just couldn't understand no matter how hard I tried. Statistics as a whole was easier for me and I found more online activities that were great at explaining about the topics and also really fun to do. A website I found for Box and Whiskers plots had great animations and went though the steps of it. If you are having a hard time understanding or want to use it in your classroom I recommend you click here. Whats really cool about this website is that it displayed like you're working on a smart board and you can use markers to write on which is really neat. I hope you have fun using Box and Whisker plots.

Hope you enjoyed my post!

Having Fun with Mean, Median, and Mode

Today's topic in class was Mean, Median, and Mode. This had to be my favorite lesson so far in the unit. This is because we did a really fun activity that of course involved the whole class which is always the best. The activity we did was called Grab a Handful which is exactly what we did. My professor had a bucket filled with cubes and she went around the room and told everyone of us to grab a hand full of cubes and then write the number of cubes that we grabbed on a small sticky note. After we wrote down our number we then got up and went to the front of the room to organized ourselves from least to greatest. If someone had the same number as you then you would have to they would have to stand in front of you. After all of us were organized we then realized that we made a human dot plot (which was pretty cool!) After that we used our human dot plot to find the Mean, Median, and Mode.

Whats really great about this activity is that it gets the whole class was engaged and when you get the class engaged then it helps them understand the concept better. After we did everything as a class then we went back to our worksheet to answer the questions which gave me a better understanding since we did that activity. This is one of the activities that I would loved to use in my classroom for the future. It's really easy to make Mean, Median and Mode fun. You can use fun scenarios or fun games. I found a website that has a great game that involves Mean, Median, and Mode click here to play it.

Hope you enjoyed this post!

  

Multiple Ways To Graph

Today in class we started a new unit which was statistics which kinda sounds boring to me. How are you suppose to make statistics fun was what I thought before class started. Even though I was thinking to myself that todays class was going to be boring my professor is really good at engaging the class with the lesson. So that days lesson was about data analysis and using different kinds of graphs. Best part with the lesson was we as a class were using M&M's (can you say yummy!) The purpose of the lesson was to use different kinds of graph and see relationships among data that we collected using the M&M's. As a class we received fun sized packets of M&M's but before we opened our package we had to guess how many brown, green, orange, red, blue, and yellow M&M's we think were in our bags. After we guessed and wrote it down we opened our bags counted them and put the M&M's on a pictograph.  After that we shared our data as a class and see if what we predicted was right or wrong. Then we used another graph called a dot plot to graph the classes data. Then after we did that we used yet another graph which was a bar graph to graph the classes data.

 
(Photos provided by me)

What I liked about this activity was that it introduced different graph to graph the same data. What I learned it that pictographs uses well pictures as graph. I believe this graph would be good to use in younger classrooms. Also another thing that I learned is that when you are making a bar graph you have to make sure that the bars are A) spaced out evenly and B) not touching because theres a difference. The difference with that with bar graphs the bars don't touch and if bars do touch then that is a histogram graph. Another thing that I liked about this activity was when we were done we got to eat our M&M's which is like the best part.  Here's a website that shows different graphs including ones I mentioned in this post

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May the Odds Be Ever In Your Favor

Finding the odds of something would have to be my favorite section of probability. It was simple to understand and was fun to figure out also I couldn't help but think of The Hunger Games every time I did a problem in this section. Every time someone talks about something being in favor or the odds being against I would always wonder how they knew that and what kind of math was behind it. When first learning how to find the odds in favor or against I was introduce to a formula but to me that was confusing and I couldn't really understand how to use it. Then in class I was taught just to think of it like this. If the problem has something in favor then I would just think Successes  over Failures and if the problem is odds against then it was Failures over Successes. Now looking back at the formula it make sense.

I found this website that shows the steps of finding the odds and I really liked it because it explained it well. The only thing I didn't like about it was the video's title said Finding the Odds but in the video they are really finding the probability. Theres a difference with finding the Odds of something and finding the probability. With finding the odds against something you're finding the failures over the successes and finding the odds in favor you're finding the successes over the failures. With probability you're finding the the success over total. Still this section is my favorite because its fun to figure out the problems you get.

Those Darn Tree Diagrams

When I was first learning tree diagrams in math I felt like I understood it in class (yeah right). Of course when I went home and started to do the homework I was absolutely lost. I just couldn't grasp the idea of it especially when some problems would say have you put back the object or keep it out. I would just get to confused on what the problem wanted me to do and how I would execute the problem.

With tree diagrams I found that it better to practice it more and more with different scenarios. When I practice it more I start to see how the tree diagrams organize the probabilities. It helps a lot with visuals. Heres a website that has problems using tree diagrams  and has different scenarios.  I find this website fun to use and a great way to practice tree diagrams. Now i'm better at tree diagrams it just took some practice to get it.

Healthy Fish

In my math 157 class we started off the probability unit with a discovery activity. This activity  was called Healthy Fish and it was to show how probability works. With this activity we need goldfish in different colors, bags, and a worksheet.  All the fish that weren't the color green were considered heathy and the ones that were green were considered sick. We counted how many healthy fish there are and how many sick fish there are. Then we counted how many fishes we had all together. After that we had to find the probability of healthy fishes and the probability of the sick fishes. We had 36 fishes that were healthy and 12 fishes that were sick so we had 48 fishes all together. After that we had to answer some questions on the worksheet (shown in the picture) The last question on the worksheet asked If we wanted to catch and eat fishes put of the pond (I personally wouldn't do that) how many fishes must we catch to guarantee 100% that we would catch 1 healthy fish? The answer would be 13 because you would have to get one more fish then the sick to guarantee a healthy fish.

This activity is a good activity to do with partners or small groups in a classroom. What I learned is that if you have advanced students in your class and students who are low at their arithmetic you can split them up into groups that best suit their ability. With the advanced students you can add more fishes to their bag and with the students who are low at their arithmetic might put less fishes in their bag. This is so they still can do the activity and grasped the concept of the activity without struggling with the math. Also if you have a student who finished the activity to keep them still busy and thinking about the activity you can ask them why they think their answer is right and have them write it down at the bottom of the page. Click here for another probability activity you can do in the classroom or online.

(Photos provided by me)