Children need to be actively involved in the four processes of data analysis - collecting, organizing, displaying, and interpreting data. But, for some younger children, there may be tasks we would like them to be involved in that go beyond what they can do on their own by hand in a timely fashion. In these cases, it is appropriate and important to involve technology. One of the simplest pieces of software to be used in data analysis is the program Excel. Excel makes it very easy to collect, organize, and display large amounts of data in a quick and efficient manner. As such, it is important that PST have experience in using this program and are aware of its uses and applicability.
This page contains one idea for an activitiy that can be supported by the use of Excel. The M&M Count and Crunch activity is adapted from the AIMS activity of the same name. I have used this with PST as well as with children and have found it to be an engaging setting to talk about data analysis concepts such as sampling, measures of central tendency, the purpose and uses of statistics, and a variety of statistical graphs and representations.
Materials: bags of fun size M&M's, paper plates, post it notes
My particular style of teaching in working with my PST is to model for them / with them, activities using approaches similar to those I might make while working with children. The largest differences between my work with PST and children being the extension activities I use, the types of numbers that I choose, and the levels of questioning involved in the activity.
1. I begin by holding up a bag of M&M's and ask my students to estimate how many M&M's are in the bag. I'll ask them to write their initials on a post it note and place it on a line graph. When doing this I make sure to get them to talk about using labels, titles, and scales for their graphs.
2. I give students an
opportunity to feel the bag [10 seconds] and revise their estimate.
We create a second line graph from their revised estimates. This
second line plot allows us to have several sets of data to examine.
3. Next I'll ask them to open bags carefully, and count their
total number of M&M's in their bag. We will use the bags to
make a bar graph [tape or bulletin board stapler] I will pre-make
poster paper for our class bar graph of number of m&m's in
bags. [Usually there are somewhere between 23 and 27 in each bag]
We will use each of these data
sets to talk about measures
of central tendency.
4. Next I'll have students make a bar graph of number of colors
in their bag. I'll have them compare theirs to the people at their
table, and have them ask each other questions that can be answered
by their graphs.
5. While this is going on, we will collect all their data to get
a whole class bar graph of colors and total M&M's. Click here
to download the excel file m and m.xls
to use with this activity. It is set up to collect the number
of M&M's for each student and will keep a running total of
each color as well as the total number of M&M's for the entire
class. I will pass my laptop around to the PST and have them enter
their data into the spreadsheet.
6. After all of the data is
collected, we will look at the data in the chart form and discuss
the options we have for displaying our data. I like to demonstrate
the Chart
Wizard function of Excel,
answer questions about the various graphs it makes, discus which
graphs are appropriate for different types of data, and talk about
what the strengths and weaknesses of each representation are.
When at all possible, I want my students to give their own reasons
and justifications for their beliefs and choices of representation.
7. Interpreting data - I'll have students come up with questions that could be answered by our graph, then have others answer them. I want them to focus not just on how this data impacts our classroom, but to think about how this might be used to answer larger qustions about manufacturing, packaging and pricing of M&M's as well.