Saturday, October 14, 2017

Human Box Plots

Class walks in.

"Hey everyone. I put some marks on the floor. Try to stand in the right spot according to your height."


"Oh yeah, I made these too. Figure out who should hold these. I'll just wait over here."


"Can we make it look a little more 'box-plotty'? Yeah, like that. Smile!"

Someone moved just before the picture. 
Can you find the error?

Besides this being a goofy team building activity, it provided a good reference point for students to understand how boxplots work: There should be (roughly) the same number of people in each quartile. Small quartiles don't mean there are less people with that height; it means that the same number of people are crammed into a smaller range. You can see the girls peeking through in the middle. Big quartiles don't mean there are more people with that height; it means that there are the same number of people spread out in a bigger range. Just look how much space the girl in red off to the right has! Every time a student had a misconception about box plots, I reminded them of this activity.

No comments:

Post a Comment