The purpose of this activity is to engage students in discussion, evaluating the effectiveness of different data displays in presenting the findings of a statistical investigation.
This activity assumes the students have experience in the following areas:
The problem is sufficiently open ended to allow the students freedom of choice in their approach. It may be scaffolded with guidance that leads to a solution, and/or the students might be given the opportunity to solve the problem independently.
The example responses at the end of the resource give an indication of the kind of response to expect from students who approach the problem in particular ways.
A reporter is writing an article about how our eating habits have changed over the past thirty years.
She looked at what types of food people typically consumed in 1985 and in 2015.
Her results are shown in the table and graphs below. The graphs have not been labelled yet, but will be when the article is complete.
If she arguing that nowadays we are less aware of what we are eating, which type of graph will be the most powerful to support her article? Give reasons for your choice.
Type of Food Consumed (by weight) | 1985 | 2015 |
Raw and home prepared | 60% | 19% |
Pre-prepared and/or packaged | 15% | 42% |
Fast food, canteens and bakeries | 7% | 31% |
Restaurant and other | 14% | 8% |
The following prompts illustrate how this activity can be structured around the Analysis and Conclusion parts of the Statistical Enquiry Cycle
The analysis section is about exploring the data and reasoning with it.
The conclusion section is about answering the question in the problem section and providing reasons based on their analysis.
The student identifies key features of different data displays and uses these features to compare the effectiveness of the displays at conveying a message.
Click on the image to enlarge it. Click again to close.
The student evaluates the effectiveness of the displays at conveying a message.
Printed from https://meaningfulmaths.nt.edu.au/mmws/nz/resource/what-are-we-eating at 8:51pm on the 26th February 2024