| Student Population: | Student population. This unit was delivered to approximately 180 7th graders who had qualified for enriched studies aRer our core unit on Measures of Dispersion was completed. Students had to merit a mean score of 75% or better on both teacher created and a uniform assessment of the core materials (copy attached) to qualify for the experience. |
| Plan: | Using the attached hand out, the teacher leads the students to explore sets of paired data. The intuitive concept of correlation is developed and explored using data gathered from the students themselves. In addition, the concept of fitting a line to data points is explored using the "Median Line," This line is defined in the material as the line connecting the median point of the first half of the data and the median point of the second half of the data. For our introductory purposes, it was agreed not to introduce the Median-Median Line procedure as part of this unit. This decision necessitated the development of a program for the TI-82 to create and graph the line ofinterest. |
| Evaluation: | Two quizzes were administered during the conduct of the unit. The mean grade of al of these quizzes was 81.5%; copies of the homework exercises and quizzes are included in the attached packet. Much of the evaluation was observational in nature: students were quite excited with the prospect of quantifying and exploring relationships among sets of data. |
| Author's Assessment: | Our Middle School program has been delivering basic statistical material in 6th and 7th grade for several years. The refinement of our curricula in 7th grade to include more activity with stem and leaf plots and more conversion of different representations of data was a direct product of my SEQual experience. In addition, when we discussed the issue of enrichment, I suggested an introduction to correlation and regression. To my surprise, I was elected to write the unit and chose to deliver it to one of the groups of qualified 7th graders. For a first attempt, I was quite pleased: the students took to the material quite well and enjoyed the searching for relationships among data describing themselves. The issue of sampling was handled as well since we selected a random sample from their ranks to complete the survey and provide data for the activities. We will refine the activity in the future but are satisfied that it does not need substantial changes. |
