ZIP
Analyzing Country Data
Activity Overview
This activity involves sample listings of the ages of 200 people from each of three countries: USA, Kenya and Japan.
Students will:
- Consider why a summary of ages is important and how a summary of the ages can be connected to a better understanding of the populations of each country.
- Examine sample ages from the three countries displayed in a spreadsheet and in histograms with percent on the vertical scale that highlight the distinctive features of the distribution of the ages from each sample.
- Connect descriptions of the histograms to summaries based on box plots.
- Learn that samples are not exact pictures of the population but sample statistics can provide a reasonable way to develop estimates of the total populations of each country.
- As an extension, students create a sample of their “own” country and put together a summary of the country based on the sample.
Objectives
- Students will be able to summarize data from a two-way frequency table.
- Students will be able to interpret conditional probabilities from a two-way table.
- Students will be able to interpret expected values from a simulation as an estimate of outcomes.
- Students will be able to interpret expected values as an indication of association.
Vocabulary
- association
- conditional probability table
- random sample
- survey
- two-way frequency table