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Showing posts from August, 2019

Crazy in Love: How to Sample

I saw this on Stats Medic (if you haven't visited this website and you teach AP Statistics, it's a must) and I'm so glad I tried it :) I did this as my opening day activity, so the students have not had any prior AP Stats instruction and it's perfect.  Basically, students "randomly" choose words from Beyoncé's "Crazy in Love" song, count the number of letters in the words, and find the average. We then make a class dotplot of everyone's means. Then, I show them how to use a random number generator (AKA their calculator) to choose a for reals random sample. Again, the students find the average word length and plot the result on a dotplot beside the first one we created. Of course, we discuss the differences between the two dotplots and the importance of random sampling. We then decide, based on given information, if Beyonc é  wrote the lyrics for "Crazy in Love". Oh yeah, I created a Beyonc é  playlist to put us in the mood!