Module 2
Categorical Data Sort and Analysis
Hey Jess! I was pretty surprised when opening the list of people to sort. I'm sure you noticed that we were the only two who put entertainers rather than people who made a significant impact in the world through politics, royalty, or religion! I laughed about that, feeling a little silly, but hey at least we were honest! I would love the chance to have a conversation with Lauren Graham one day! I struggled a bit trying to decide how to sort them, but I ended up with the following groups: Religious Inspiration, Successful/Famous, Politicians/Political Activists, and Royalty. After sorting them into those groups, I also thought it would be interesting to see how many of these well-known people are still alive today. To total it up, 13 people listed a person who is deceased and 10 of us put people who were still alive. I just thought that would be an interesting point to look at since we could choose either way. Our class seems to be inspired by people who have made a significant change in the world, or people who stand for something great. Many of the people chosen were highly intelligent or influential, which really shows us the type of inspiration our classmates look up to. By choosing people who changed the world so significantly, it shows us that our peers hope to have a big impact on the world as well. I think if we were to look further into this, it would be interesting to see what aspect of these well-known people inspire our classmates the most. For example, with people like Bill Gates, Oprah, and Mark Zuckerberg, is it their work-ethic that is inspirational? Their charity work? Or simply their huge success? This could categorize this data in a whole new way, seeing what encourages our peers to have inspirations. If we had to modify it that way, we could have each person pick three words to describe their chosen person. That would show us more of the qualities our classmates are looking to be inspired by. The biggest struggle I had with grouping was with people such as Jane Austen, Antoni Gaudi, Mark Twain, and Paulo Coelho. I felt weird putting them in the same group as Bill Gates, Oprah, Drake, and Lauren Graham because they are famous and successful for such different things and in such different times, however, I ended up just grouping them together in the broad category of "Successful or Famous People" and considered this group to be authors, famous business people, or people successful in entertainment. I noticed that with the way I sorted my data, there were many more people in the "Successful/Famous" and "Politicians/Political Activist" sections than there were in "Religious Inspiration" and "Royalty" combined. This activity or one similar would be great to do in a classroom, and pretty easy to do as a class activity. If we were to all do it together, we could write all the names on the board and have the students group the people themselves or in groups. Then they could all share ways that they grouped these people and compare the differences in their strategies. We could then discuss as a class the most efficient ways to group these people. Anyway, I would love to hear feedback on how I sorted these people, and maybe some advice on how I could have better sorted my "Successful/Famous People" group! What were some similarities and differences in the way we grouped ours? I was a little nervous with a few of the people on the list that I had never heard of. I did Google searches, but did you come to the same conclusions as I did about who they were? My sorted list is below:
Religious Inspiration
Jesus Christ (listed twice)
Haregewoin Teferra
Successful/Famous People
Bill Gates
Mark Zuckerberg
Paulo Coelho
Oprah Winfrey
Lauren Graham
Drake
Jane Austen
Mark Twain
Antoni Gaudi
Politicians/Political Activists
John F. Kennedy
Barack Obama
Nelson Mandela
Malala Yousafzai
Michelle Obama
Rosa Parks
Aaron Swartz
Royalty
Queen Victoria
King Leonidas
Queen Elizabeth 1
Statistics in the Elementary Grades
I found this reading to be very interesting! I liked how straight-forward it was and it is certainly helpful for us as future elementary teachers. One thing that stuck out to me was when Franklin and Mewborn pointed out how often teachers fail to include their students in the data collection questions to make it relevant to them. Students will feel so much more included and connected when the question relates to their own lives, as we have seen with our class data collection this week. Choosing a person who is important in our specific lives helped us so much because we all had specific reasons for choosing the person we did and it shows a lot about who we are as people. Even simple tasks like counting pockets still keeps the students interacting in the activity and keeps it about them, rather than a hypothetical task on paper. Being curious about their peers will keep them interested in the data that is collected if the question is more personal. Using things such as clothing, pockets as seen in the video or shoes as shown in the reading, is such an easy way to make a data collection project happen in just one lesson. I loved some of the classroom ideas posed in this reading and I have saved it to my computer to use more in the future!
How Many Pockets?
The very first thing I noticed in this video were how attentive the students were! They were seated so nicely in a large circle where everyone could see each other, see the teacher, and the board. Having the students count their pockets as they wait for instruction while she prepared was a great way to keep them seated quietly and focused. She clarified what counted as a pocket so they all understood what to count. I was so impressed how quiet and focused they were as second graders. They had fun and laughed, but they were so focused on the task at hand. The teacher sat in a chair, but almost floor level to connect with the ids in the circle and she included herself in showing them how to count pockets. The students were very focused on determining what qualified as a pocket and they were surprised to see a student only have one. They made predictions and blended that into the lesson as well. The main idea that the students are working on is the comparing of data. While collecting is was fun, many of them thoughtfully had trends that they noticed in the data. This is a great activity to make them more comfortable in learning mean, median, mode, and range in the future of their math education. They worked on applying the data to their class by asking questions like, "What does this mean for our class?" Is this an activity you would do in the classroom, or something similar? I thought it was great. and very easy to go about.
Exploration Questions
1. Formulate a Question: This is where the topic question is posed, and data must be collected in order to answer.
2. Collect and Represent Data: First, it needs to be determined how and what kind of data needs to be collected. The data is collected and we will either choose categories to place them in or find a way to represent the quantities, such as a number line or graphs.
3. Analyzing Data: Ask questions such as, "what does this mean?" and "what else can we get from this information?"
4. Interpret the Results: At this point, we use the data and analysis to answer the original question posed.
Observe a group of people (such as people waiting in line at the movies, grocery store, etc…). Explore the different ways you might collect data and categorize them (eye or hair color, type of shoe, left handed or right handed, color of backpack or book bag, color or style of clothing, etc…). Discuss which ways yield the most interesting information and best fit the group.
I performed this task at Walmart, which is always an interesting place. I waited until I got there to decide how I wanted to categorize them. I decided to go with hair color. I sat on the bench and collected the first 10 people in the self check-out line. I honestly chose this group because I noticed people with unnatural hair colors, which in retrospect probably is not the way I should have done this and makes my results biased.
Results:
1 person had black hair.
1 person had purple and blue hair.
1 person had green hair.
3 people had brown hair.
2 people had blonde hair.
2 people were bald.
I categorized them as follows:
Natural colored dark hair (4)
Natural colored light hair (2)
Unnatural colored hair (2)
No hair (2)
Hey Jess! I was pretty surprised when opening the list of people to sort. I'm sure you noticed that we were the only two who put entertainers rather than people who made a significant impact in the world through politics, royalty, or religion! I laughed about that, feeling a little silly, but hey at least we were honest! I would love the chance to have a conversation with Lauren Graham one day! I struggled a bit trying to decide how to sort them, but I ended up with the following groups: Religious Inspiration, Successful/Famous, Politicians/Political Activists, and Royalty. After sorting them into those groups, I also thought it would be interesting to see how many of these well-known people are still alive today. To total it up, 13 people listed a person who is deceased and 10 of us put people who were still alive. I just thought that would be an interesting point to look at since we could choose either way. Our class seems to be inspired by people who have made a significant change in the world, or people who stand for something great. Many of the people chosen were highly intelligent or influential, which really shows us the type of inspiration our classmates look up to. By choosing people who changed the world so significantly, it shows us that our peers hope to have a big impact on the world as well. I think if we were to look further into this, it would be interesting to see what aspect of these well-known people inspire our classmates the most. For example, with people like Bill Gates, Oprah, and Mark Zuckerberg, is it their work-ethic that is inspirational? Their charity work? Or simply their huge success? This could categorize this data in a whole new way, seeing what encourages our peers to have inspirations. If we had to modify it that way, we could have each person pick three words to describe their chosen person. That would show us more of the qualities our classmates are looking to be inspired by. The biggest struggle I had with grouping was with people such as Jane Austen, Antoni Gaudi, Mark Twain, and Paulo Coelho. I felt weird putting them in the same group as Bill Gates, Oprah, Drake, and Lauren Graham because they are famous and successful for such different things and in such different times, however, I ended up just grouping them together in the broad category of "Successful or Famous People" and considered this group to be authors, famous business people, or people successful in entertainment. I noticed that with the way I sorted my data, there were many more people in the "Successful/Famous" and "Politicians/Political Activist" sections than there were in "Religious Inspiration" and "Royalty" combined. This activity or one similar would be great to do in a classroom, and pretty easy to do as a class activity. If we were to all do it together, we could write all the names on the board and have the students group the people themselves or in groups. Then they could all share ways that they grouped these people and compare the differences in their strategies. We could then discuss as a class the most efficient ways to group these people. Anyway, I would love to hear feedback on how I sorted these people, and maybe some advice on how I could have better sorted my "Successful/Famous People" group! What were some similarities and differences in the way we grouped ours? I was a little nervous with a few of the people on the list that I had never heard of. I did Google searches, but did you come to the same conclusions as I did about who they were? My sorted list is below:
Religious Inspiration
Jesus Christ (listed twice)
Haregewoin Teferra
Successful/Famous People
Bill Gates
Mark Zuckerberg
Paulo Coelho
Oprah Winfrey
Lauren Graham
Drake
Jane Austen
Mark Twain
Antoni Gaudi
Politicians/Political Activists
John F. Kennedy
Barack Obama
Nelson Mandela
Malala Yousafzai
Michelle Obama
Rosa Parks
Aaron Swartz
Royalty
Queen Victoria
King Leonidas
Queen Elizabeth 1
Statistics in the Elementary Grades
I found this reading to be very interesting! I liked how straight-forward it was and it is certainly helpful for us as future elementary teachers. One thing that stuck out to me was when Franklin and Mewborn pointed out how often teachers fail to include their students in the data collection questions to make it relevant to them. Students will feel so much more included and connected when the question relates to their own lives, as we have seen with our class data collection this week. Choosing a person who is important in our specific lives helped us so much because we all had specific reasons for choosing the person we did and it shows a lot about who we are as people. Even simple tasks like counting pockets still keeps the students interacting in the activity and keeps it about them, rather than a hypothetical task on paper. Being curious about their peers will keep them interested in the data that is collected if the question is more personal. Using things such as clothing, pockets as seen in the video or shoes as shown in the reading, is such an easy way to make a data collection project happen in just one lesson. I loved some of the classroom ideas posed in this reading and I have saved it to my computer to use more in the future!
How Many Pockets?
The very first thing I noticed in this video were how attentive the students were! They were seated so nicely in a large circle where everyone could see each other, see the teacher, and the board. Having the students count their pockets as they wait for instruction while she prepared was a great way to keep them seated quietly and focused. She clarified what counted as a pocket so they all understood what to count. I was so impressed how quiet and focused they were as second graders. They had fun and laughed, but they were so focused on the task at hand. The teacher sat in a chair, but almost floor level to connect with the ids in the circle and she included herself in showing them how to count pockets. The students were very focused on determining what qualified as a pocket and they were surprised to see a student only have one. They made predictions and blended that into the lesson as well. The main idea that the students are working on is the comparing of data. While collecting is was fun, many of them thoughtfully had trends that they noticed in the data. This is a great activity to make them more comfortable in learning mean, median, mode, and range in the future of their math education. They worked on applying the data to their class by asking questions like, "What does this mean for our class?" Is this an activity you would do in the classroom, or something similar? I thought it was great. and very easy to go about.
Exploration Questions
1. Formulate a Question: This is where the topic question is posed, and data must be collected in order to answer.
2. Collect and Represent Data: First, it needs to be determined how and what kind of data needs to be collected. The data is collected and we will either choose categories to place them in or find a way to represent the quantities, such as a number line or graphs.
3. Analyzing Data: Ask questions such as, "what does this mean?" and "what else can we get from this information?"
4. Interpret the Results: At this point, we use the data and analysis to answer the original question posed.
Observe a group of people (such as people waiting in line at the movies, grocery store, etc…). Explore the different ways you might collect data and categorize them (eye or hair color, type of shoe, left handed or right handed, color of backpack or book bag, color or style of clothing, etc…). Discuss which ways yield the most interesting information and best fit the group.
I performed this task at Walmart, which is always an interesting place. I waited until I got there to decide how I wanted to categorize them. I decided to go with hair color. I sat on the bench and collected the first 10 people in the self check-out line. I honestly chose this group because I noticed people with unnatural hair colors, which in retrospect probably is not the way I should have done this and makes my results biased.
Results:
1 person had black hair.
1 person had purple and blue hair.
1 person had green hair.
3 people had brown hair.
2 people had blonde hair.
2 people were bald.
I categorized them as follows:
Natural colored dark hair (4)
Natural colored light hair (2)
Unnatural colored hair (2)
No hair (2)
My questions to you throughout are listed in bold, but I would love any other comparisons of our data collection and what we got out of the videos and readings! Look forward to hearing from you!
Hi Megan!
ReplyDeleteI think you had perfect ideas with sorting everyone! They all definitely seem to fit right where you put them, and I think you picked very fitting group titles. We have some similarities, like a religion category and a political category for two examples. I like how you put politicians and political activists in the same group, considering it is the same field. I did come to the same conclusions you did about who people are/were! I would definitely do an activity like the How Many Pockets activity in my room! This is not something students often think about when getting dressed- how many pockets they have so I think it was a great selection. The observation you conducted was also great. I like the topic you picked and also like how you chose to categorize them! I am trying to think of another way to categorize but am not having the best luck! I bet if we asked in a classroom full of students we would get a lot of fun and innovative responses for more ideas on how to categorize!