Interpreting Statistics: A Case of Muddying the Waters

A little background

  • In case you are trying the MARS MAP Classroom Challenges for the first time, it is recommended that you read the Brief Guide for teachers and administrators before you get started.
  • Before the lesson, students work individually on a task that is designed to reveal their current understandings and difficulties. You review their work and create some questions that will help them to improve their solutions.
  • At the start of the lesson, students role-play a scene that provides the background to the lesson task. Next, students work in small groups on a collaborative discussion task. They extract information from evidence and critically assess how it was gathered and presented.
  • After a whole-class discussion students again work individually, on a new task. This has similar content to the original task, allowing them to demonstrate the progress they have made during the lesson.
  • Additional resources for this lesson include: interpreting_statistics_slides_beta.ppt

Objectives

  • To help you assess how well students are able to interpret data and evaluate statistical summaries.
  • To help you assess how well students are able to critique someone else's interpretations of data and evaluations of statistical summaries.
  • To introduce to students the dangers of misapplying simple statistics in real-world contexts, and illustrates some of the common abuses of statistics and charts found in the media.
60 mins K-12.MP.3 K-12.MP.4 HSS.ID.C.7 HSS.ID.C.8 HSS.ID.C.9 HSS.IC.B.3 HSS.IC.B.4 HSS.IC.B.5 HSS.IC.B.6
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