Activity Overview
Imagine asking your students to go home and play a game of Monopoly for homework? Which properties represent the best value for money? Where should you place your houses and hotels? In this three part investigation, students are provided with a degree of scaffolding in Part 1 followed by less and less scaffolding. In Part 1 students explore how the price of properties vary as you travel around the board. What's behind this variation?
Objectives
Use scatterplots to identify and qualitatively describe the association between two numerical variables in terms of direction, form and strength.
Use a least squares line to model an observed linear association and the interpretation of its intercept and slope in the context of the data.
Vocabulary
- Residual
- Line of best fit
- Least Squares Regression
- Scatter plot
- Extrapolate
- Linear
About the Lesson
Is there any relationship between location and price on the Monopoly board? Students reason through a relationship by considering the amount by which properties increase as they move around the board. Simplistically put, Mayfair is 40 squares from Go and costs $400, so a good starting point is to assume the relationship is directly proportional to arrive at y = 10x. Students work on the relationship from this point using all the available data to determine a more appropriate relationship including how to quantify the accuracy of their rule. Using the skills developed; students explore the relationship between price and rental return and consider why the board might be set up in this way.