Starting statistics - mean, median, mode and range

For the first 5 weeks of this term we are learning about statistics. 

First we had to see what our learning goals are for this unit

For year 7-8's our goals are

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The firs thing we learnt how to do was to find the mean, median, mode and range of a data set.

On Tuesday we just did 5 examples as it was our first time and we had a lot to learn. Some people found it very hard to add up all the numbers and divide them. 

On Thursday we did 10 more practises with different data sets.

It was awesome to see some students being able to do long division completely by themselves in order to figure out the mean (average).  

DMIC maths week 8

Here are our maths DMIC questions for this week 

Group 1

Jasmine is fundraising for her netball trip to Samoa. She has 60 tickets at $4 each. She sold half to her nana, ¼ to her uncle, ⅛ to her sister and ⅛ to her classmates. How many did each get? Who has the greatest chance of winning the prize?

 Group 2

A bakery makes 1/4  strawberry cupcakes, 1/10 vanilla cupcakes and ½ chocolate cupcakes. 

If there are 48 cupcakes altogether, how many would there be of each flavour? How many cupcakes were a different flavour? What is the chance getting a chocolate one?

Matariki maths question

Today we did an open ended maths question.

This was the question - 

For Matariki the school is going to have a hangi fundraiser. Mrs Kelly has allowed a budget of $1,000 to be spent on the ingredients. If taro is $4 per/kg, chicken is $12/kg, pumpkin is $2/kg, kumara is $5/kg etc etc. What combinations can you buy to prepare the hangi and what will your total be?

Here is what each group did.

We discussed how it was way easier to figure out what the other groups had done if they wrote the units next to the numbers (such as the second picture above this text). 

Miss Ashley showed us how we could rewrite our information but including the units so it made more sense to people.

Fraction problems

Today we had two DMIC problems that were about fractions.

Here is the first question - 

A bakery makes ⅛ strawberry cupcakes, ¼ vanilla cupcakes and ½ chocolate cupcakes.

If there are 50 cupcakes altogether, how many would there be of each flavour? What is the chance getting a chocolate one?

These drawings were from Janett's group. They used equal sharing to find out that 1/2 of 50 is 25, 1/4 of 50 made 2 boxes of 12 and 2 boxes of 13 (not equal!), and 1/8 of 60 wasn't equal either. Miss Ashley said to make the boxes equal, even if you have to leave some cupcakes out of it. So they found out that 1/4 of 50 was 48, which had 2 left over. They found out that 1/8 of 50 was 6, with 2 cupcakes left over there as well. 

With help from Fereti's group, we learnt that 50/2=25 was a faster way than equal sharing. Together we figured out what the number sentences/equations would be for the other cupcakes and wrote these. Then Miss Ashley challenged us to flip the divided bys into times tables and write that as well.

Then Miss Ashley changed the numbers and we had to only use times tables to figure it out. Then we had to write it two ways. It was easy now that we knew how to do it.

Here is the second question (a different group)

Jasmine is fundraising for her netball trip to Samoa. She has 60 tickets at $4 each. She sold half to her nana, ¼ to her uncle, ⅛ to her sister and ⅛ to her classmates. How many did each get? Who has the greatest chance of winning the prize?

Welsey's group shared how they solved the first two bits - 1/2 of 60 and 1/4 of 60. Some of us didn't understand why it made sense to divide by 2 when its talking about halves.

Junefia, Maria, Ana and Lily's group shared their drawing of how they tried to find 1/8 of 60, but again this wasn't a simple equation and it wasn't even. Wesley's group came close to figuring out that it was a decimal number, but wasn't sure what number. Miss Ashley helped out a little to help us figure out that it was 7.5 or 7 and a half per box.

Junefia's group wrote this. 

Earlier Lily had identified that 15 was half of 30 and this made sense because 1/4 was half of a 1/2. Miss Ashley helped everyone to realise that 1/8 was half of a 1/4, so they could have just halved 15 and solved it easily instead of drawing. 

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Fractions

We have been learning about fractions. 

Because there is year 4, 5 and 6 in the same class and we all know different things, we had different things to learn and focus on.

Miss Ashley wrote up 100+ questions and we had to try and get as far as we could through it. 

For the year 4's, their goal was to try and get up to question 30. 

For the year 5's, their goal was to try and get up to question 80. 

For the year 6's, their goal was to try and get up to the last question. 

Most of us got there, or even PAST where we needed to get! 

What we are learning in maths!

At the moment we are learning about measurement.

We have been learning
- what is the difference between standard and non-standard units and which is better to use
- what the units stand for (cm means centimetre, m means meters, km means kilometre)
- which is bigger or smaller
- how many mm fit in 1cm, how many cms fit in 1m, and how many m's fit in 1km.
- how to convert between units (e.g. changing 2,500m to 2.5km).

One day we went outside to practise drawing what we thought 1mm, 1cm and 1m looked like/how big they were. Some of us weren't sure but we learnt that 1cm is about the width of your finger and 1m is about the length of your arms.

 (Our first ideas...)

1m = width of your arms

1cm = width of your finger.

Two boys figured out that if two people laid next to each other with arms outstretched, it makes 2m. 

So then we tried to make it as long as we could, even trying to see how long the court is if we measured using our arm-spans. 

We have been practising in class how to convert between different units.

We had a DMIC question about measurement - 

And we shared our working on the board.

Then we practised saying which one is bigger by converting all the numbers to the same unit so we could compare them.