Problem Solve with Presidential Data

Problem Solve with Presidential Data

Sue Pawula

Summary

Presidential data is the source of a math data lesson integrated into the content area of a Social Studies classroom, linking students to the real world.  Students were expected to (CCSSI) understand a set of data, use measures of center and variability for numerical data, and find probabilities of compound events.  In other words, they gathered data based on presidential records and did bell work involving creating measures of central tendency such as mean, median, and mode.  Working in cooperative groups where they each held specific jobs, students were asked to study eight or nine presidents and determine their age at inauguration.  In order to calculate that they needed to subtract the president’s birth year and date from the inauguration year and date factoring in the month and day in which the presidents were born. 

The next step was creation of a stem-and-leaf plot where students were in charge of putting sticky notes with their particular presidents name and age.  The “age” sticky note leaves were placed into a graph, which depicted a range of tens representing from 40 to 70 years.  If there were identical leaves, they were place horizontally to allow for a better mathematical picture of the data collected.  These leaves had to be moved around as new leaves were placed on the graph to insure accuracy of the data.  Students then discussed the data and drew a collaborative graph.  This allowed for students to confer and reason mathematically concerning placement of the leaves on the graph.

Data was then analyzed for the median, mode, and mean.  The mode was the easiest measure to identify by just looking at the stem-and-leaf plot graph.  Students counted sticky notes to find the median but later, through discussion decided that it would be easiest to just total the number of data entries and divide by two to find out which one would be the median.  Then students were allowed to use calculators to find the mean.  However, they discovered the inaccuracy that can occur from trying to add all the numbers at once and agreed it would be better if they solved this by only adding a few at a time.  One of the teachers made a suggestion that they enter the data into Microsoft Excel in order to keep track of the numbers.  At the end of class, students filled in exit slips where most indicated that they understood the day’s lesson. 

This lesson was continued through a tie into literature the next day when the teacher read a story and students collaboratively created graphic organizers to illustrate the distribution of presidents’ ages. Student groups created different representations of the data with one group making an ascension bar graph while another group created a circle graph. Plans were made for future lesson incorporating more technology and student creation of histograms to show data.

Reflection

This article demonstrates that teachers do have the ability to create cross-curricular lessons through which different subject areas can be integrated to increase student motivation and understanding.  By allowing learning to move forward through student groupings and discussion, teachers can demonstrate best practices as was done in this instance.  Taking real world information and making it come to life for the students and allowing them to create graphs from the data they created gives them a real grasp and connection to how to record data and what it means.  When these students need to look at other graphs recording data on a different topic, they will have a much better understanding of what they are observing and how to interpret it.

Patterson, L. G., & Patterson, K. L. (2014). Problem solve with presidential data. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, 19(7), 406-411.