Forming Groups
Next, you will work in groups to complete the following questions. Quickly introduce yourselves to the members in your group by telling them your first and last name, along with your desired career pathway. You’ll need a minimum of three people to serve in the group roles of note-taker, reporter, and timekeeper. If you have more people, you may consider adding the roles of moderator and listener. You may find that some members naturally tend to act as moderators and listeners. If so, value that tendency and take advantage of it! Here’s a brief description of all the roles:
- Note-taker (required) – takes notes.
- Reporter (required) – reports the result to the class.
- Timekeeper (required) – manages times and keeps team members on track.
- Moderator (optional)– directs activity and helps to keep the group on task.
- Listener (optional) – extracts the ideas from the brainstorming or group activity and recaps them; offers explanations and reasoning.
Let’s try practice group work now by answering Question 2 below.
question 2
In the video, one of the statisticians from the United Statistics Bureau discussed how analyzing statistics is like a microscope that allows us to see things that are just too big for our eyes to take in. Let’s continue to explore this idea. Parts A and B below ask you to perform unrelated tasks. Answer these questions individually.
Part A: Use the table below to record estimates of the number of hours of sleep you were able to get for each night.
| Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday |
Part B: Write 293 in expanded notation.
Now come together as a group to compare and discuss your answers to Parts A and B. Record the results in answer to Part C below.
Part C: Compare your answers for Parts A and B with the other members in your group. Discuss how they are the same, how they are different, and possible reasons why they are the same or different.
In Part A, the information you recorded in the table are data! The sleep times are not all the same, as they changed from person to person and even from night to night. You also may have identified some reasons that impacted the amount of sleep each student was able to get each night. You discovered that the data varied from student to student. It is highly probable that there were no students who had the exact same answers in their tables.
Answer part D as a group now, based on the ideas you developed above.
Part D: Consider the number of movies college students watch during freshmen year. If you asked 100 freshmen on your campus this question, do you expect to get the exact same answer for each student?
Question 3
In statistics, we want to ask investigative questions. Consider the questions below together and record your answers. Your answers may vary, so discuss them to arrive at a consensus to answer each question.
Part A: Do you think you would find any studies on the number of hearts that humans have?
Part B: What is an investigative question that you could ask regarding the data you recorded in Question 2, Part A?
Part C: What additional information would you need to collect if you wanted to know why college students do not get enough sleep each night?
Question 4
Identify at least one difference between mathematics and statistics.
