1. A basic exercise to be used towards the beginning of Intro to Stats

2. Show variability through distribution of different size samples. Make a simple estimate from combining results of multiple trials of each sample size.

3. Students will need to be able to calculate a simple proportion. Students will need to be able to create a histogram of their calculated proportions.

4. Each group will have a bag of 50 popsicle sticks with 30 marked red and 20 unmarked. Each group will perform 15 trials using a pre-assigned sample size of 5, 15, or 30. After taking each sample (5, 15, or 30), students will calculate the proportion of red sticks in the sample.

5. Mechanics, Continued After calculating each proportion the students need to put it into a histogram with bin sizes of.1. Groups that have done their trials with the same size samples will combine their results so that the class has a greater set of data. (That may also be used for later activities.)

6. The initial level of thinking required will be the simple calculating of the proportion. The next level of thinking required will be taking the calculated proportion and creating a histogram. The third level of thinking required will be to examine the histogram and look at the variability that the histogram depicts.

7. Variety, Continued In addition to examining their histogram, students will need to examine other groups’ histograms and determine why one group’s may have more or less variability. Each group will attempt to estimate the population proportion based on the results from their data.

8. Students will complete a worksheet that will ask them various questions about the graph obtained from each size sample. As a class, talk about factors that may change our conclusion regarding the variation, i.e., changing the population proportion, or the number of trials taken. (Take this opportunity to use an applet http://www.tc.umn.edu/~delma001/stat_tools/software.htm.) http://www.tc.umn.edu/~delma001/stat_tools/software.htm