Education Technology

Collecting Pens (Continued)

Subject Area
Math: Statistics: Probability and Random Variables
Level
6-8
Activity Time
100 Minutes
TI Calculator
TI-84 series
Other Materials
This is Activity 8 from the EXPLORATIONS Book:
Graphing Calculator Activities for Enriching Middle School Mathematics

Resource Types
Lessons

Collecting Pens (Continued)

Activity Overview

In this activity, students learn how to instruct the calculator to collect and organize the results from several trials of a simulation designed to find out how many boxes of cereals a customer would have to buy to collect all six color pens. Students enter a prewritten program, analyze the results of the simulation from the summary statistics and statistical plots.

Before the Activity

  • Study the program code and its explanation
  • See the attached PDF file for detailed instructions for this activity
  • Print pages 77 - 86 from the attached PDF file for your class
  • During the Activity

    Distribute the pages to the class.

    Follow the Activity procedures:

  • Download the program into the calculator
  • Download a copy of the program into other calculators using the link cables
  • Run the program, and enter the number of trials [≤ 99]
  • Observe the random numbers generated by the program, and understand that the program stores the data as a list
  • Sort the data in ascending order, record the minimum and maximum values, and determine the range
  • Produce and examine a list of statistics summarizing the information
  • Set up a histogram
  • Graph a box-and-whisker plot
  • Analyze the distribution of the data
  • After the Activity

    Students complete the Questions sheet.

    Review student results:

  • As a class, discuss questions that appeared to be more challenging
  • Re-teach concepts as necessary
  • Subject Area
    Math: Statistics: Probability and Random Variables
    Level
    6-8
    Activity Time
    100 Minutes
    TI Calculator
    TI-84 series
    Other Materials
    This is Activity 8 from the EXPLORATIONS Book:
    Graphing Calculator Activities for Enriching Middle School Mathematics

    Resource Types
    Lessons
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