How should police departments address excessive use of force? A number of high-profile cases have painted a disturbing picture of how police officers treat the people they’re supposed to keep safe.
In this lesson, students compare the distributions of excessive force of two police departments and explore how the shape of the distribution affects the effectiveness of different solution attempts.
Students will
Given a graphical display of univariate data, use the mean, median, and mode to describe the “typical” case
Analyze and interpret graphical displays of univariate data to answer multi-step problems
Compare a normal vs. power law distribution, and understand how the shape of a distribution affects real-world policy
Before you begin
Students should be able to calculate and use percentages. They will need to read and make sense of a histogram throughout this lesson, but those skills can still be developing at the onset.
How much should states spend on schools and police? Students analyze histograms and use mean and median to explore state spending habits. Then, they discuss how much they think states should be spending.
Topic:
Interpreting Categorical and Quantitative Data (ID)
Have income distributions in the U.S. improved over time? Students compare percentages of total income earned by different subgroups of the working population and decide whether or not the “American Dream” is equally achievable by all Americans.
Topic:
Interpreting Categorical and Quantitative Data (ID)
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Mathalicious lessons provide teachers with an opportunity to teach standards-based math through real-world topics that students care about.
How have video game consoles changed over time? Students create exponential models to predict the speed of video game processors over time, compare their predictions to observed speeds, and consider the consequences as digital simulations become increasingly lifelike.
Topic:
Building Functions (BF), Interpreting Categorical and Quantitative Data (ID), Interpreting Functions (IF), Linear, Quadratic, and Exponential Models (LE), Seeing Structure in Expressions (SSE)