Course Guide - USAID Teacher Education Project

time.) Mention that these types of displays will be discussed in the next two classsessions.At this point, ask students to think about the audience for their information. Is it onlyfor themselves, as an item of interest? Or might their data be combined with thosefrom other university classes to inform educators at the national level? How doesconsidering their audience influence their vision of how their data might look?After noting their ideas, say that you would like them to use tally marks to organizethe whole class data and then create a bar graph.This will give you the opportunity to discuss the difference between categorical andnumerical data. Mention that when creating a bar graph they will need to note thecategories (subject areas) on one axis, and a number (those who favoured a particularcategory) on the other.The difference between categorical and numerical data may be new to students, sotake time to help them understand that categorical data can be thought of a "words,"such as months of the year for students' birthdays, kinds of foods people prefer, etc.For this activity, the category is "Favourite High School Subjects."Numerical data involves "numbers" such as how many siblings students have, theirheight, weight, time spent commuting to class, etc.It is likely that students are familiar with bar graphs, but ask half of the class to createtheir graph with the categories on the horizontal axis and the other half with thecategories on the vertical axis. These are both formats seen in graphs in news articlesand reports. However, many teachers only have children work with the "bars upright"model.After students have created their graphs on centimetre grid paper, ask them toconsider the implications of their data. What trends do they notice? How might theinformation be useful to you as their instructor? What does the data imply for theirbecoming teachers of mathematics?b) End the class by asking them to think of other displays of data that they see ineveryday life, in newspapers, on the Internet, in the doctor's office, etc.