While this support activity is designed for a face-to-face, synchronous delivery, it should be noted that supporting text and interactive examples have been embedded in the digital assignment page to assist asynchronous or hybrid course delivery and to be made more accessible to students performing make-up work.

Suggested instructional plan for synchronous active-learning

In the next preview assignment, in-class activity, and practice assignment, students will be calculating measures of variability with technology. Students will need to recall measures of center, such as mean, from In-Class Activity 4.A. In order to understand variability, students need to know how to calculate the distance that each observation varies from the mean. This corequisite support activity instructs students to calculate deviations from the mean using observations from a dataset about hurricane damage (in millions of dollars).

• Have students work in pairs to answer Questions 1–4.
• After each Questions 1 -2, and again after each of Questions 3 and 4, have a brief, whole-class discussion to promote deeper understanding of deviations from the mean within context. Students will need this to learn about variability in the preview assignment.
• Use Question 3 and Question 5 to ensure students can interpret large numbers. Take time discuss how large values can be expressed in millions of dollars or in billions of dollars.
• Use Questions 6 and 7 to ensure students understand the meaning of positive and negative numbers within the context and that they can compare positive and negative values.

Note (for asynchronous or hybrid delivery, or for students completing this assignment alone) that students are given refreshers on defining mean and median, expressing and interpreting large numbers, and understanding distance as an absolute value in the student digital activity page.