Statistical Concepts: Measures of Central Tendency and Dispersion
This lesson is intended for students to gain conceptual understanding. The graphing calculator is valuable for checking if the sets of numbers students produce satisfy specifications.
It is beyond the scope of this beginning lesson to illustrate if one of these measures of central tendency provides a better description of a population's characteristics than another measure. That would be a very important follow-up lesson.
A Statistical Study on the Letters of the Alphabet
This exercise will help the students see that there are mathematical rules that can effect even our use of the English language.
Dream Team Statistics WebQuest
The lessons will guide you to find and analyze statistics about your favorite sports teams. You will use your technology skills as well as your mathematical knowledge in this WebQuest.
Some of the statistical concepts that you will be working with are: measures of central tendency (mean, median, and mode), measures of variability (range), and various ways to display data (graphs and charts).
Kentridge AP Statistics: 2002-03 WebQuest
This is a WebQuest assignment containing a variety of tasks that was given to AP Statistics students to complete over the summer before starting the course.
The Major Leagues
This project on baseball will involve using mathematical concepts to evaluate the baseball players on Major League teams.
How to Lie With Statistics WebQuest
This lesson is a group project in which students will be searching web newspapers for articles and advertisements that report statistics about different subject areas. Each individual will analyze their articles. The group will discuss everyone's results, choose the best, make suggestions for improving the reliability of the information, and produce both an oral and written report.
Probability - Roll the Dice!
This lesson can be used as an introduction to probability. Students work in pairs to record outcomes when dice are rolled. Students also research the history and modern uses of probability.
Probability: The Study of Chance
The purpose of this lesson is to begin the process of helping students to learn the basic principles of probability.
THE TITANIC: What Can Numbers Tell Us About Her Fatal Voyage? WebQuest
What do you know about the REAL Titanic? its passengers? its crew? This webquest will help students to explore these topics and look at them from a mathematical perspective. In the process, they will find not only interesting facts and dramatic stories, but also numerous statistics related to the event. The statistics tell stories of their own. It will be the students job to discover some of these stories and share your results.
Probability and Sports
This lesson is devoted to Internet research on a specific topic: finding topics in sports where probability is relevant. The goal of the lesson is to introduce some statistics and probability concepts by looking at practical questions that arise in professional sports
Ideas that Lead to Probability
The activity and two discussions that make up this lesson introduce ideas that are the basis of probability theory. By using everyday experiences and intuitive understanding, this lesson gives students a gradual introduction to probability.
Introduction to the Concept of Probability
An activity and two discussions of this lesson introduce the concept of probability and the basic set operations that are useful in solving probability problems that involve counting outcomes. This material is the basis of the so-called naive probability theory. In contrast with axiomatic probability theory that deals with abstract, axiom-driven concepts, the naive theory is built upon intuitive and experimental knowledge.
Tree Diagrams and Probability
This lesson is designed to develop students ability to create tree diagrams and figure probabilities of events based on those diagrams.
Probability and Geometry
The activity and two discussions of this lesson connect probability and geometry. The Polyhedra discussion leads to platonic solids, and the Probability and Geometry discussion leads to connections between angles, areas and probability. The subtle difference between defining probability by counting outcomes and defining probability by measuring proportions of geometrical characteristics is brought to light.
Conditional Probability and Probability of Simultaneous Events
This lesson is based on several interesting problems. Each problem has a somewhat unexpected answer; in fact, many people have a hard time accepting experimental results for these problems, as the results may seem counterintuitive. This very difference in expectations and actual results leads to a deeper consideration of the related mathematics and to acquiring new tools for solving problems, namely the ideas and formulas connected with conditional probability and probability of simultaneous events.
Replacement and Probability
This lesson explores sampling with and without replacement, and its effects on the probability of drawing a desired object. It is designed to follow the Conditional Probability and Probability of Simultaneous Events lesson to further clarify the role of replacement in calculating probabilites.
From Probability to Combinatorics and Number Theory
The activities and discussions in this lesson are devoted to data structures and their applications to probability theory. Tables and trees are introduced, and some of their properties are discussed.
Expected Value
This lesson's activity and discussion introduce and develop the idea of expected value. The discussion helps students investigate the definition and formula of expected value.
Unexpected Answers
Four activities in this lesson give examples of probability problems with unexpected answers. The goal of the lesson is to demonstrate that people should be careful when using probability, and that some games that seem fair are not. The discussion helps users to draw conclusions from the activities.
Statistics and Shopping
This lesson is devoted to demonstrating some "real world" applications of statistics. By examining some web pages about shopping and consumer information, students will see the many uses of statistics in this area and gain experience working with and understanding statistics in a practical setting.
Introduction to Statistics: Mean, Median, and Mode
The goal of this lesson is to introduce the concepts of mean, median and mode and to develop understanding and familiarity with these ideas. The Mean and Median Activity lets students explore mean and median in an efficient way; the Mean, Median and Mode Discussion helps them to formalize their knowledge.
Stem-and-Leaf Plots
This lesson is designed to introduce students to stem-and-leaf plots.
Histograms and Bar Graphs
The goal of this lesson is to introduce histograms, bar graphs and the concept of class interval. An activity and three discussions with supplemental exercises help students learn how data can be graphically represented (and mis-represented). Students will learn to distinguish between bar graphs and histograms and to use each in the appropriate situations.
Box Plots
The goal of this lesson is to introduce box plots and quartiles. An activity and discussion with supplemental exercises help students learn how data can be graphically represented.
The Bell Curve
The goal of this lesson is to introduce the concepts of the normal curve, skewness and the standard deviation.
Links to Statistics Resources
This web site provides links to web sites that contain statistical data that may be useful in projects.
Refdesk
This web site is a good site for finding statistical data.