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  • FACTivity – Slip Sliding Away
PDF preview of the FACTivity for "Slip Sliding Away"
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FACTivity – Slip Sliding Away

  • Activity
  • Middle School
  • 1 Classroom Period
  • Recreation
  • Social Science
  • Calculating Percentage
  • Experiment
  • Random Sampling
  • Sample Size
  • Survey
PDF preview of the FACTivity for "Slip Sliding Away"
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In this FACTivity, you are going to discover whether a sample of your class can represent the whole class. You will conduct a short survey about recreational activities and compare results when you sample the class differently.

Materials:

  • Paper to write student names
  • A container to hold paper slips

FACTivity – Slip Sliding Away

Black and white illustration of a group of three skiers at the bottom of a snowy mountain.

Part Of

Slip Sliding Away: Who Goes Skiing and Snowboarding in America?

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Standards addressed in this Activity:

The Common Core Standards are educational benchmarks in the United States that outline clear expectations for what students should know and be able to do in English language arts and mathematics from kindergarten through 12th grade, aiming to ensure consistency and coherence in education nationwide.
  • Follow precisely a multistep procedure when carrying out experiments, taking measurements, or performing technical tasks.
  • Find a percent of a quantity as a rate per 100 (e.g., 30% of a quantity means 30/100 times the quantity); solve problems involving finding the whole, given a part and the percent.
  • Recognize a statistical question as one that anticipates variability in the data related to the question and accounts for it in the answers. For example, "How old am I?" is not a statistical question, but "How old are the students in my school?" is a statistical question because one anticipates variability in students' ages.
  • Understand that a set of data collected to answer a statistical question has a distribution which can be described by its center, spread, and overall shape.
  • Recognize that a measure of center for a numerical data set summarizes all of its values with a single number, while a measure of variation describes how its values vary with a single number.
  • Display numerical data in plots on a number line, including dot plots, histograms, and box plots.
  • Summarize numerical data sets in relation to their context, such as by:
  • Reporting the number of observations.
  • Describing the nature of the attribute under investigation, including how it was measured and its units of measurement.
  • Giving quantitative measures of center (median and/or mean) and variability (interquartile range and/or mean absolute deviation), as well as describing any overall pattern and any striking deviations from the overall pattern with reference to the context in which the data were gathered.
  • Use proportional relationships to solve multistep ratio and percent problems. Examples: simple interest, tax, markups and markdowns, gratuities and commissions, fees, percent increase and decrease, percent error.
  • Understand that statistics can be used to gain information about a population by examining a sample of the population; generalizations about a population from a sample are valid only if the sample is representative of that population. Understand that random sampling tends to produce representative samples and support valid inferences.
  • Use data from a random sample to draw inferences about a population with an unknown characteristic of interest. Generate multiple samples (or simulated samples) of the same size to gauge the variation in estimates or predictions. For example, estimate the mean word length in a book by randomly sampling words from the book; predict the winner of a school election based on randomly sampled survey data. Gauge how far off the estimate or prediction might be.
  • Informally assess the degree of visual overlap of two numerical data distributions with similar variabilities, measuring the difference between the centers by expressing it as a multiple of a measure of variability. For example, the mean height of players on the basketball team is 10 cm greater than the mean height of players on the soccer team, about twice the variability (mean absolute deviation) on either team; on a dot plot, the separation between the two distributions of heights is noticeable.
  • Use measures of center and measures of variability for numerical data from random samples to draw informal comparative inferences about two populations. For example, decide whether the words in a chapter of a seventh-grade science book are generally longer than the words in a chapter of a fourth-grade science book.
Social Studies Standards are educational guidelines outlining the essential knowledge, skills, and concepts students should learn in subjects such as history, geography, civics, and economics, aiming to provide a comprehensive understanding of societal structures, historical events, and global perspectives.
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The Natural Inquirer program produces a variety of science education materials for PreK through grade 12. Natural Inquirer products are produced by the USDA Forest Service and other cooperators and partners.

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