Reflection/Summary
Katherine Huffman
Our unit focuses on the concept of least squares. We have
attempted to find a way to make an investigation of the topic that will
be both interesting and beneficial for the students. We have
created a survey for the students to complete that focuses on
information that they will hopefully find interesting. We have
the students measure their own height, arm span, foot length, and hand
length, as well as that of their family and friends in an attempt to
make the material being covered appear more pertinent to their
lives. It is important to provide students with an activity that
they will find interesting because when students are interested in
something they are more likely to learn. The use of technology in
this unit also helps to generate students interest. I have found
that most students are more willing to be actively involved in the
learning process when they are not just sitting in the typical
classroom filled with desks and chairs. The opportunity to do
their own investigations and use technology will help to promote
students interest in the material being covered and give them a deeper
understanding of the concepts.
This unit implements Fathom2 as well as the TI-83+ calculator.
Fathom2 is a very useful program because it so easily analyzes data and
is such an easy program for the students and teachers to use. I
found the survey feature of Fathom2 to be extremely useful. Not
only is it a quick and easy way to collect data, but it is easy to
create the survey itself. The option to mount the survey on your
personal webpage is one of the best features I found. This makes
it extremely easy to use as a classroom tool. The students can
simply go to the teachers webpage and take the survey. The data
is immediately uploaded to the Fathom2 survey webpage and can easily be
downloaded into Fathom2 where the students can manipulate the data to
investigate multiple statistical concepts.
The ability to impose a movable line onto scatter plots is also a
helpful tool in our lesson. This ability allows students to make
a line of best fit using their eye and then compare it to the actual
line of least squares that Fathom will provide for them. The
students can also impose squares to help them understand the concept of
line of least squares, as well as the reason for its name.
However, Fathom is not the only method students have for finding the
equation for the line of least squares. I think it is important
for students to understand the procedure that the computer and
calculators use. For this reason, we included a lesson in which
the students take a very small data set and find the equation for the
line of least squares for that data set. This will help the
students to have a deeper understanding of the line of least squares as
well as ideas associated with the concept such as correlation.
The students can then see how they can verify their computations using
the calculator.
I found Fathom2 to be a very useful program and was surprised at how
easily I was able to use the program. This project helped me to
see that Fathom2 would be a useful tool in the classroom. It is
not a difficult program for the students to use or understand and it
will help them to have a deeper understanding of the material being
covered because they are allowed to manipulate data as well as see
multiple examples in a very short amount of time. I believe that
our unit could easily be implemented in the classroom and would be
excited to use these lessons in my classroom in the future.
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