Exploring Statistical Enquiries

We have begun to delve into the world of statistics in Matariki and Mahutonga, looking at the steps of a statistical investigation and then completing our own.  In the kids own words, Statistics is getting people's ideas about questions and showing it.  

We were introduced to the cycle and the steps:

Explored creating some of the different types of graphs as a class:

Then began organising our own investigation around the group's favourite desserts.  Tamariki had to decide if their questions were opened or closed, figure out how they'd manage their data and then choose a graph to show their findings:  

Here are some of our finished products:

We'll be using these skills to find out more information in the coming weeks! Watch this space!

Statistical Investigations

 As part of our Healthy Body, Healthy Mind inquiry, we have been thinking about different ways to measure our strength and fitness. 

We revisited some learning around heart rates. We had another go at recording our heart rate before and after exercise. This time, we put all that data on a dot plot. This type of graph makes it easy to see patterns! 

 

The beep test might spark fear in the hearts of many, but we absolutely loved it. Everybody gave it their all. This left us with a really interesting set of data. We looked at a different type of graph - the Stem & Leaf. We learned about how to analyse data by finding the range, mean, median and mode. We also learnt that data always has limitations but as long as you know and make clear what they are, that's all good! 

Next we looked at how to plan an investigation. Staying with the idea of fitness data, we thought of exercises that would be easy to measure. We also talked about the idea of sampling. We don't have time to measure everyone! Here are some of the things we measured:

Plank

Sit-ups

Sprint course

Standing jump

Pull-ups

Here is an example of the plan we used:

We are data detectives! Watch out for more data analysis to come. We'll do the beep test again and compare our results later in the term. 

How much rubbish do we have in our lunchbox?

 We've been looking at what kind of packaging our food comes to school in. We're learning about how to conduct a statistical investigation. In Nicola and Gabrielle's maths groups we thought of three categories our food could be wrapped in: food with no wrapping that will only leave compost, food with reusable containers or plastic, or rubbish. We got out our lunch boxes and tallied up the totals, and ...
83 items of rubbish
52 items with a reusable wrapper or container
113 items with compost material

Can we do better, yes we can! Please help us to reduce the number of things with single use plastic.

How Much Water Do We Use? How Much Water do We Waste?

How much water are we wasting?

Discoveries

We found out that we wast 22 ml of water per minute. It costs $2.24 per cubic metre of water. 950,000 -190-5 days a week for 39 weeks= 25.641025641. Most people use the tap water fountain and can't/won't turn it off. When you leave a tap dripping for 24 hours it will waste 29 litres.

How much water will we probably use this year?

We estimate that this year we will use 950 cubic meters. We may not be using as much as we should be but we don’t know if all this water is being used to its proper usage. Technically we are not using as much as we should, which is 29 - 30 litres for health purposes, such as going to the toilet twice (13 - 13.5 litres a flush ) and drinking 3 litres of water to keep ourselves healthy.

25.9138025095 litres roughly Per student Daily is how much we are using.

Our proposal / recommendation / next steps

• Fix the drinking fountain tap

• Try to turn the drinking fountain which has the tap handle off or not use it at all.
• Don’t wash your hands for longer than a minute.
• Use grey water for the toilets {grey water is when dirty water from taps or household equipment gets used for toilet flushes}
• Collect the rainwater
• Get www.watersaverme for the school

How much do we Use? Statistical Investigation

Statistical Investigation:  How much do we use

At Worser Bay school we have been working on how much we waste as a statistical investigation.

I, Sam  have been working on how much paper we have been wasting we have also found that to make paper you don’t just need trees.

    

Waste of paper

13 pieces of paper per student every day at Worser Bay School.  Is that too much?                

                        By Meg, Emma R, Molly, Betty, Raiha and Hayley

Earlier last year the office printed off newsletters for each family. There are 188 people in our school and the newsletter had 4 pages so 4x188=752. so we now use technology because that wasted too much paper.

• We found out that the school orders 200 boxes of paper per year and in each box there is 5 reams of paper. In each realm there is 500 pieces of paper.

• Adding all those numbers together it is 5x500=2500x200=500,000.
• We wanted to find out how much paper each child uses everyday per year.
• There are 188 kids in our school and 200 school days a year.   
• 500,000 divided by 188=2659 divided by 200=13. So that means we use 13 pieces of paper per student every day at Worser Bay School.  Is that too much?                                                         
• That is at least 17 trees a year used for only 2 photocopiers.

• Trees produce oxygen which makes us breath. Trees are a crucial element in the human life form.
• People need to understand that more than 1 million trees are going to waste just for paper!.
• There should be a limit of paper to use each day. If we reduce this amount of paper we can make a difference.
• Usually people print off a piece of paper to read out in assembly and never use that piece of paper again. But we can reduce this amount by just using our books or technology.                         

• We use 200 boxes each year throughout the whole school. There are 5 reams of paper in each box and 500 pieces of paper in each ream. We found out that there are 500,000 pieces of paper being bought in for the school. We counted how much paper is in all the classes from there work books and there was 26000, 74800 and 76800 paper being used in the classes in books. So 500,000+26000+74800+76800= 677600.

Recommendation

If you usually get a fresh piece of paper STOP because you can just use a scrap or another side of the paper that has been used.                                                                                             

If you draw or write something that you didn’t like or make a mistake don’t just go put it the bin, reuse it.

Encourage your teachers to present more work in digital formats.

Statistical Investigation: How Much Do We Use?

How Much do We Use?

This investigation is looking at how we use resources at Worser Bay School.  We are interested in whether or not we are wasting resources, whether we are becoming more conscious of looking after our environment and whether or not we can do anything to improve the way we use resources.   Everybody is finding information, asking questions, surveying people about their opinions and attitudes so that we can get a full picture of what is happening.  

Investigating the Recyling.  How much paper have we put in the recycling this week?  How was it used?

Some Amazing facts:

• We use about 950,000 litres of water each year
• It takes about 10 litres of water to make one sheet of white A4 paper
• We use about 500,000 sheets of paper each year

We will be sharing some of our results with you next week.

Data Squares

This is a data square. It is a way to collect and organise information. We have been using them to explore data over the week. Today we collected information about sustainability across the school. We asked 3 questions:

1. Have you used the worm farm recently? 

2. Are there any reusable or recyclable materials in your lunch box?

3. Is there any plastic rubbish in your lunch box? 

Once we had all the data we could explore organising it in different ways and make statements about what it showed. 

There was a lot of discussion, collaboration, and working together to complete this part of the task.

We created a large bar graph together to show our findings and also used what we have been learning in writing to explain it. Using the SEE (Statement  Explanation Example) structure,  we wrote up one of the things we noticed from the data. 

 

New Zealand Endangered Species Survey

As part of our inquiry about endangered species in New Zealand, we would like to carry out a statistical investigation from people's opinions.

Please answer the questions in the survey below...

By Anna, Chanel and Hayley