Students will be working with investigative questions they have posed previously (see activity on posing questions) or investigative questions they pose in this session for the given data set they are working with.  This particular activity is designed for using CensusAtSchool data.

Helpful links:

From CensusAtSchool UK

http://www.censusatschool.org.uk/resources/data-handling/118-cleaning-up-your-data

Students will need to be familiar with the background information to the data set.  This may involve looking at the variables in the dataset, looking at how the data was collected and measured, looking at the survey question that was asked to get the data.

In this activity students will be exploring the given data cards in response to investigative questions they have posed.  In some instances students might organise the data cards and then pose their investigative question once they have found something of interest in their data cards (EDA- exploratory data analysis).

This activity will also allow students to develop the language of description for summary situations.

Information about the CensusAtSchool survey can be found at: http://www.censusatschool.org.nz/

Information relating to determining appropriate variables and data collection methods, and gathering data can be found in the making measures document which is located at: http://www.censusatschool.org.nz/2009/information-packs/

In this activity students are reintroduced to the 2009 CensusAtSchool survey by way of data cards.  (This could be adapted to meet any of the previous CensusAtSchool surveys.) Students will be involved in posing investigative questions, making displays using their data cards and giving descriptions of their display.  This is followed up with a reflection on the process leading to identifying what are key aspects of a good investigative question.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was a scientist and an artist. He thought that the span of someone’s arms was equal to their height. Why do you think he was interested in working out body proportions?

Do you think Leonardo’s theories still work today?

Was Leonardo’s theory that a person’s height is equal to their arm span true for New Zealand students in 2007?

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was a scientist and an artist. He thought that the span of someone’s arms was equal to their height. Why do you think he was interested in working out body proportions?

Do you think Leonardo’s theories still work today?

Was Leonardo’s theory that a person’s height is equal to their arm span true for New Zealand students in 2007?

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was a scientist and an artist. He thought that the span of someone’s arms was equal to their height. Why do you think he was interested in working out body proportions?

Do you think Leonardo’s theories still work today?

Was Leonardo’s theory that a person’s height is equal to their arm span true for New Zealand students in 2007?

Are you a Nosey Parker?

Do you have lots of questions that you want to find the answers to?

We can use statistics to answer all sorts of questions and to investigate lots of ideas.

Are you a Nosey Parker?

Do you have lots of questions that you want to find the answers to?

We can use statistics to answer all sorts of questions and to investigate lots of ideas.

Do our arms get longer as we get older?

In this activity you will explore whether the length of your arm span is related to how old you are.