Unit 1 Contents

Finding Medians

1. Shannon, Maya, and Roberto want to find out whose street has the most traffic. They counted the number of cars passing each of their houses in one minute and put the information into a data table. They did this three times on each street.
1. Find the median number of cars passing in one minute for each student's street.
2. What are the variables in their investigation?
3. Are the variables categorical or numerical?
4. Make a bar graph of Shannon's, Maya's, and Roberto's data on a piece of graph paper. Use the median values for your graph.
5. Whose street do you think is the busiest? Whose is the least busy? Explain why you think so.
6. Shannon, Maya, and Roberto collected their data around 3:30 p.m. on a Thursday. Predict what might happen to the median number of cars if they collected their data at 5:30 p.m., 8:30 p.m., and 3:00 a.m.
7. About how many cars do you think would pass Shannon's house in ten minutes? How did you make your estimate?
2. In music class at Bessie Coleman School, Lee Yah, Roberto, Grace, and Luis lined up across the front of the room to demonstrate a folk dance. They began with their arms outstretched and their fingers just touching. They could just reach across the room. If the median arm span of the students in Room 204 is 54 inches, about how wide is the room? Tell how you know.