This activity provides a great opportunity to practice recording and organizing sets of data, which is often harder than it looks! Repeat the activity, but this time assign a "recorder" to each group. Have them record the number of "hits" for three separate trials. The recorder will share the data with the group. Have them try to determine what the data is composed of, and how it should be organized, first. (This part can be tricky!) They should come up with pairing the Trial # with the # of Hits. (For example, "Trial #1" may have resulted in 13 hits, Trial #2 with 20 hits, and Trial #3 with 22 hits.)

Now it's time to graph the data! How should the graph be set up? Have them again try to do this first in groups without your input. They should come up with plotting the Trial #s on the X-axis, and the # of Hits on the Y-axis. (Why this way? Because the data that is changing, that may be different each trial, is the # of Hits. That type of "dependent" data is always on the Y-Axis.)

They can make a separate graph for each trial, or use different colored pencils/pens to plot three sets of data on one graph.

Finally, what does the graph show? What is the difference between trials, and why? Did the group get "better" at the activity with each new trial? Could you start over and look at other variables, like girls vs. boys?


Standards
his activity supports: California Academic Content Standards - Mathematics - Fourth - Statistics - Data Analysis & Probability. Standard 1.0: Students organize, represent, and interpret numerical and categorical data and clearly communicate their findings.