From: julie knapp <littleredhenschool@yahoo.com>
To: Teacher2Teacher Public Discussion
Date: 2004092613:58:16
Subject: Re: Mean, Median and Mode idea



I also use the median strip in the road as a description for
understanding the term "median".  

I find it helpful to use a polling of favorite colors to illustrate
"mode", instead of numerical data - because the concept of "mode"
somehow seems "too easy" (that they just pick out the number found
most frequently... if there are two modes, they think they should
average the two modes, as they do in finding the median)... but when
the data is color choice, it seems to make more sense to the student
that you just find the "most popular" result or results (and not try
to average two colors;-)

In my early examples of "mean" I use examples that show items being
poorly (unevenly) distributed, then re-distributed so that each person
has an equal amount - such as the number of cookies that each student
will get if we distribute the amount evenly among all students. They
have no trouble seing that we need to add up how many cookies there
are, then divide them by how many students there are. (and sometimes
you have to break a few cookies into pieces to make things even :-)

-julie

Post a reply to this message
Post a related public discussion message
Ask Teacher2Teacher a new question