The purpose of this Warm-up is for students to begin to see the need for samples of data when the population is too large. In this activity, students are asked to think about how information about an individual could be a start to estimating information about a population, but that more information should probably be collected.
Give students 2 minutes of quiet work time, and follow with a whole-class discussion.
Consider the question: In general, do the students at this school have more letters in their preferred name or last name? How many more letters?
Sample responses:
The purpose of the discussion is to get an idea of how samples might give some information about population data.
Invite students to share whether they think the length of their names gives enough information to understand the length of names at the school. If it does not come up, note that it may not be enough to know typical values very well, but it is a start.
Ask whether knowing the lengths of all students’ names except one at the school might be enough to get an idea of what is typical. Students should begin to understand that having a group somewhere between all of the students and a single student might be enough to get an idea of typical name lengths.
Ask students whether it would be just as difficult to find typical name lengths for people all over the world. If it does not come up, point out that the larger the group a question applies to, the more difficult it gets to collect the data and compute the measures of center and variability.
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The purpose of this Warm-up is for students to begin to see the need for samples of data when the population is too large. In this activity, students are asked to think about how information about an individual could be a start to estimating information about a population, but that more information should probably be collected.
Give students 2 minutes of quiet work time, and follow with a whole-class discussion.
Consider the question: In general, do the students at this school have more letters in their preferred name or last name? How many more letters?
Sample responses:
The purpose of the discussion is to get an idea of how samples might give some information about population data.
Invite students to share whether they think the length of their names gives enough information to understand the length of names at the school. If it does not come up, note that it may not be enough to know typical values very well, but it is a start.
Ask whether knowing the lengths of all students’ names except one at the school might be enough to get an idea of what is typical. Students should begin to understand that having a group somewhere between all of the students and a single student might be enough to get an idea of typical name lengths.
Ask students whether it would be just as difficult to find typical name lengths for people all over the world. If it does not come up, point out that the larger the group a question applies to, the more difficult it gets to collect the data and compute the measures of center and variability.