options: Modeling: students learn to choose and use appropriate mathematics and statistics to analyze real-world empirical situations, improve decisions, and report on their conclusions and the reasoning behind them.

Ratios & Proportional Relationships: students learn to recognize, describe, represent, and reason with ratios, rates, proportional relationships, and percent.

Number Systems and Quantity: students learn to understand the complex number system and reason quantitatively.

Measurement & Data: students learn to work with data and measure attributes such as time, money, length, area, and volume. They may learn to compare measurements to operations and convert between different units of measure.

Functions: students learn to define, use, and evaluate functions to model relationships between quantities.

Operations & Algebra: students learn to solve problems using algebraic thinking and operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. They may learn to identify and explain arithmetic patterns, evaluate or manipulate numerical expressions, and reason with equations and inequalities.

Counting & Cardinality: students learn to know number names and the count sequence, count to tell the number of objects, and compare numbers.

Number & Operations - Fractions: students learn to understand fractions as numbers and may work with them using addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

Geometry: students learn to classify geometric figures by their properties, and understand and compare the relationships between them. Students develop and use formulas to compute lengths, areas, and volumes, and they use transformations to generate new shapes and compare existing ones. Geometry can be studied with and without coordinates.

Statistics & Probability: students learn to analyze and produce data distributions, and build understanding of univariate and bivariate data. They learn to interpret data, make statistical inferences, justify conclusions, understand rules of probability, and use probability to make decisions.

Number & Operations in Base Ten: students learn to work with the base-ten system and build place value understanding.
problem_activity: Activity
In this activity, students calculate the mean of a data set and interpret it in the context of the given situation. The first data set students see here has a dozen values, discouraging students from redistributing the values incrementally and encouraging them to use a more efficient method. In the second question, students analyze the values in data sets and use the structure (MP7) to decide whether or not it makes sense that a given mean would match the data set.
As students work and discuss, notice the reasons they give for why the data sets in the second question could or could not be Tyler's data set. Identify students who recognize that the mean of a data set cannot be expected to be higher or lower than most of the values of the data set, and that a fair-share value would have a value that is roughly in the middle of data values.
Launch
Keep students in groups of 2. Give them 6–7 minutes of quiet work time, and then time to discuss their responses with their partner.
Representation: Internalize Comprehension.
Activate or supply background knowledge about determining means of data sets. Allow students to use calculators to ensure inclusive participation in the activity.
Supports accessibility for: Memory; Conceptual processing
Student Facing
For the past 12 school days, Mai has recorded how long her bus rides to school take in minutes. The times she recorded are shown in the table.
9
8
6
9
10
7
6
12
9
8
10
8
Find the mean for Mai’s data. Show your reasoning.
In this situation, what does the mean tell us about Mai’s trip to school?
For 5 days, Tyler has recorded how long his walks to school take in minutes. The mean for his data is 11 minutes. Without calculating, predict if each of the data sets shown could be Tyler’s. Explain your reasoning.
data set A: 11, 8, 7, 9, 8
data set B: 12, 7, 13, 9, 14
data set C: 11, 20, 6, 9, 10
data set D: 8, 10, 9, 11, 11
Determine which data set is Tyler’s. Explain how you know.
Student Response
Teachers with a valid work email address can
click here to register or sign in
for free access to Student Response.
Activity Synthesis
Select a couple of students to share how they found the mean of Mai's travel times. Poll the class briefly to see if others in the class found the mean the same way.
Then, focus the discussion on the second task and on what values could be reasonably expected of a data set with a particular mean. Ask students how they decided to rule out or keep certain sets of data as potentially belonging to Tyler. If not mentioned by students, highlight that the mean of a data set would be a value in the middle of the range of numbers in order for it to be a fair-share value.
Point out that, unlike hours of work or cats in crates, the times of travel here cannot actually be redistributed. The interpretation of mean translates into a thought experiment:
The mean is the travel time each day if all the travel times in the set were the same such that the combined travel time for this data set and the original data set was the same.
Speaking, Listening: MLR8 Discussion Supports.
Use this routine to support students’ explanations of which data set is Tyler’s. Invite students to use the sentence frame “Data set ___ is Tyler’s because . . . .” Invite listeners to use the sentence frame “I agree/disagree, because . . . .” This will help students explain their own reasoning and make the sense of the reasoning of others.
Design Principle(s): Support sense-making; Optimize output (for justification


correct_option_index: 9