Dear Family,

Welcome to my schoolnotes page!

I am excited about beginning the 2009-2010 school year.

Be sure students have all of their school supplies by Thursday, August 27 and return all forms to their homeroom teacher by Friday, August 28.

Please check your child's organizer for daily homework assignments.  The Homework Hotline is also available on a daily basis to check on work for your child.

We are starting with Chapter 1 of the textbook.

interpreting misleading graphs.

Your child will learn how to quantify data, and how to organize and

display it in different ways. The mean is the sum of the data values

in a data set divided by the number of data items. The median is

the middle value of an odd number of items arranged in order. For

an even number of items, the median is the average of the two

middle values. The mode is the value or values that occur most

often. When all the data values occur the same number of times,

there is no mode. The range, or the difference between the least

and greatest values, is used to show the spread of the data in a

data set.

Other ways to display and compare data include bar graphs,

histograms, frequency tables, circle graphs, box-and-whisker plots,

line graphs, and scatter plots.

A bar graph can be used to display and compare data. The scale of

a bar graph should include all the data values. It should also be

easily divided into equal intervals.

A histogram is a bar graph that shows the frequency of data within

equal intervals. It contains no space between the bars.

A frequency table is one way to organize data into categories or

groups. By including a cumulative frequency column in the table,

you can keep a running total of the frequencies in each category.

A circle graph, sometimes called a pie chart, shows how a set of

data is divided into parts. The entire circle contains 100% of the

data. Each sector, or slice, of the circle represents one part of the

entire data set.

A box-and-whisker plot is used to show distribution of the data in a

data set. The data is divided into four equal parts, or quartiles, in a

box-and-whisker plot.

A line graph uses line segments to connect data points for different

times. The result is a visual record of change over time.

A scatter plot helps determine relationships between different data

sets. For instance, two sets of data, such as the length and the

weight of dinosaurs, may be related. To find out, make a scatter plot

of the data values in each set. A scatter plot has two number lines,

called axes—one for each set of data values. Each point on the

scatter plot represents a pair of data values. These points often

appear to be scattered.

Your child will learn how to identify misleading data, which helps

them learn critical thinking skills. For example, advertisements and

news articles often use data to support a point, sometimes

representing data in a way that influences how the reader interprets

the data. A data display that distorts information in order to

persuade can be misleading.

Visit www.parent.msm.HRW.com to find links to activities to do with

your child.