Projects

To actually apply statistics to real questions, nothing answers like a class project. Students can get their hands on messy, raw data. Collecting and analyzing their data, displaying their findings and reaching conclusions — these may be your students’ best mathematical experiences of the school year!

Junkmail (a mini project) http://athomewithmath.terc.edu/english_PDF/math_ENG_sect10.pdf

No one is immune from receiving junk mail, but just how much of it is really finding its way to your address? In this simple activity, data collection and analysis are a key part of a project to learn about the importance of recycling. For one week, students count and record the number of pieces of junk mail received in their homes. The display and organization of the data can be modified to address the data and statistics topics the class is working on. MSP full record

RoadKill http://www.edutel.org/roadkill/rkmysteries.html

For this online project, students and teachers collect roadkill data in their community for analysis and compare their data to other areas participating in the project. The site provides a detailed protocol for monitoring and reporting roadkill, a method of reporting data through the web, and access to data collected by all participants. The project crosses many disciplines, including environmental science education and data analysis. MSP full record

Numerical and Categorical Data http://illuminations.nctm.org/LessonDetail.aspx?ID=U116

In this unit of three lessons, students formulate questions that can be addressed with numerical and categorical data. They then collect, organize, and display relevant data to answer those questions. As they collect categorical data, they consider how to word questions and how to record and display the data. As they collect numerical data, they focus on how to obtain measurements and how to represent and analyze the data by describing its shape and other important features. The final lesson examines specifically the differences in representing and analyzing categorical and numerical data. (From Illuminations, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Vision for School Mathematics — MSP full record)

Boil, Boil, Toil and Trouble: The International Boiling Point Project http://mathforum.org/library/view/10562.html

Be part of an annual event: Enroll your class in this free Internet-based collaborative project. Students discover which factors--room temperature, elevation, volume of water, or heating device--have the greatest influence on boiling point. Students boil water, record their data, and send it via email to be included in the site's database of results. After gathering the data, activities focus on analyzing the compiled data to find answers to questions about how and why water boils. MSP full record

The Global Sun Temperature Project http://www.ciese.org/curriculum/tempproj3/en/index.shtml

Technology allows students from around the world to work together to determine how average daily temperatures and hours of sunlight change with distance from the equator. Students can participate in the project each spring, April-June. Students learn to collect, organize, and interpret data. You will find project information, lesson plans, and implementation assistance at the site. MSP full record

Down the Drain: How Much Water Do You Use? http://www.k12science.org/curriculum/drainproj/

This Internet-based collaborative project will allow students to share information about water usage with other students from around the country and the world. Based on data collected by their household members and their classmates, students will determine the average amount of water used by one person in a day. Students must develop a hypothesis, conduct an experiment, and present their results. MSP full record

The Gulf Stream Voyage http://www.ciese.org/curriculum/gulfstream/

Here is an interdisciplinary project that uses actual data to help students investigate the science and history of the Gulf Stream. Math students can greatly benefit from the opportunity to collect data and draw conclusions based on the data. In the lesson called Current Now, students use real-time data and satellite images to determine how the Gulf Stream moves in the course of a year. In another activity, students use data about water temperature obtained from ships and buoys to determine the course of the Gulf Stream. MSP full record

---

 Back to top

Copyright June 2008 — The Ohio State University. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0424671. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.