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Tornado! |
Tornadoes are powerful storms that cause millions of dollars of damage and the death of many people each year in the United States. During this activity, you will learn about tornadoes and analyze data related to these killer storms. Be sure to answer the questions on the worksheets given to you. Remember, this activity is part of your math curriculum. Learn the meanings and applications of the math terms as you encounter them in the lesson.
Your task is to learn about tornadoes and complete the exercises related to them. Throughout this lesson, you should be learning about measures of central tendency and how they are used to interpret data. By the conclusion of this lesson, you should use the data collected to make reasonable value judgments about tornadoes. Should tornadoes be a serious concern when purchasing certain types of homes? Are particular areas of the country more likely to be struck by tornadoes?
Use the links in the paragraph above to answer the following questions:
1. What is the mean of a set of data?
2. What is the median of a set of data?
3. What is the mode of a set of data?
4. What is the range of a set of data?
5. How do you calculate the standard deviation of a set of data?
6. What is the difference between a tornado warning and a tornado watch?
7. Which state had the most number of tornadoes between 1950 and 1994?
8. Using the adjusted CPI index, which state had the most expensive tornado per occurrence?
9. What was the mean average number of tornadoes in the top 20 states between 1950 and 1994?
10. What was the range of number of tornadoes between the top ranked state and the twentieth ranked state?
11. Why is the mean average that you found in number 9 a poor indicator of the data?
12. What was the median number of tornadoes in the top 20 states between 1950 and 1994?
13. Using the data collected from 1950 to 1994, how many tornadoes do you think will strike in the state of Florida this year? Justify your answer.
14. If Florida has 21 million residents, predict the chance of a person dying from a tornado. Express your answer as a percent.
15. List 5 real life examples of when the mean average is a poor indicator of central tendency.
tornadoes - http://205.156.54.206/om/torn.htm
measures of central tendency - http://www.mste.uiuc.edu/hill/dstat/dstat.html
Should tornadoes be a serious concern - http://www.fema.gov/kids/tornado.htm
Are particular areas of the country more likely to be struck by tornadoes - http://www.srh.noaa.gov/mlb/tornado.html
Any other websites related to tornadoes
Students will show comprehension of the statistical terms mean, median, mode, and range by correctly answering the questions found in the Process portion of this page. The students will also make value judgments about the data and the indicators of central tendency by correctly completing the questions.
This activity was designed to teach students the rudimentary terms related to statistical analysis. Data has more relevance to students when the data is real. I hope that this simple WebQuest lesson, which is a first for my Algebra classes, is the first of many Internet activities.