Lesson 16

The mathematical purpose of this activity is to pose and answer a statistical question by designing an experiment, collecting data, and analyzing data. Students will determine how best to display data, select appropriate measures of center and variability, and answer a statistical question involving two different treatments. The work of this lesson connects to previous work because students learned about the shape, measures of center, and measures of variability for data distributions. This connects to upcoming work because students will investigate bivariate data using two-way tables, relative frequency tables, scatter plots, and lines of best fit.

Technology isn't required for this lesson, but there are opportunities for students to choose to use appropriate technology to solve problems. We recommend making technology available. When students choose an appropriate display for data and choose to use technology to calculate statistics, they are using appropriate tools strategically (MP5). Students make sense of problems and persevere in solving them (MP1) because students have to make sense of the situation in order to come up with a meaningful statistical question. Students also must select an appropriate variable to analyze for comparing student heights which engages them in aspects of mathematical modeling (MP4).

One ruler for every pair of students.