Class Topics: 09.02.14

In Common Core Math Six today, Mr. Giomini introduced the last lesson of Chapter One - Lesson 1.6: Box-and-Whisker Plots.  Box-and-whisker plots are a handy way to display data broken into four quartiles, each with an equal number of data values. The box-and-whisker plot doesn't show frequency, and it doesn't display each individual statistic, but it clearly shows where the middle of the data lies. It's a nice plot to use when analyzing how your data is skewed.  There are a few important vocabulary terms to know in order to graph a box-and-whisker plot. Here they are:

• Q1 – quartile 1: the median of the lower half of the data set
• Q2 – quartile 2:  the median of the entire data set
• Q3 – quartile 3:  the median of the upper half of the data set
• IQR – interquartile range: the difference from Q3 to Q1
• Extreme Values – the smallest, lower extreme, and largest, upper extreme, values in a data set

Today's Learning Targets: The student will be able to...

• display numerical data in plots on a number line, including dot plots, histograms, and box plots.
• summarize numerical data sets in relation to their context, such as by giving quantitative measures of center and variability (interquartile range), as well as describing any overall pattern and any striking deviations from the overall pattern with references to the context in which the data were gathered.

For Evening Practice, the student is expected to...

• complete page 26 and 27.
• complete Khan Skill: Creating Box-and-Whisker Plots.

Box and whisker plot: Is this some kind of cute cat video? No! Box and whisker plots seek to explain data by showing a spread of all the data points in a sample. The "whiskers" are the two opposite ends of the data. This video is more fun that a handful of catnip.

Constructing a box and whisker plot: Here's a word problem that's perfectly suited for a box and whiskers plot to help analyze data. Let's construct one together, shall we?