You will be familiar with hearing discussions about probability in terms of words, if not quantities – “It isn’t likely to rain on the washing today”, “The chances of winning the lotto are very small” “It is equally likely that the other team will win”. For the remainder of this term we are going to use numerical representations of probability, including tree diagrams, two-way tables and Venn diagrams.
Create-A-Graph image by 6/7R student
Last lesson each of the students in both 6/7 classes completed a survey (created in Google Docs and embedded on the page with the tab “Survey2” at the top of this page) and the data was saved in a Google Docs spreadsheet. Then the students chose one of the data sets (favourite ice-cream flavours, footy teams, TV shows etc) and produced a bar chart or column graph using the class results. You can see from the graph above that “The Simpsons” is one of the most popular TV shows amongst 12 and 13 year olds at Hawkesdale P12 College!
We will use the same data to create a stem and leaf table with height data and a scatter plot with height and foot size. Students have also been asked to collect a graph from a newspaper or magazine and will describe what the graph shows. This Voicethread, Year 6/7R Student Data and Graphs, contains some of the graphs produced in class.