Shooting Hoops (Part 2)

This Instructional Activity is a part of the Lesson 11, Unit 8, Grade 6. In this activity, students continue to develop their understanding of what could be considered typical for a group as well as variability in a data set. Students compare distributions with the same mean but different spreads and interpret them in the context of a situation. The context given here (basketball score) prompts them to connect the mean to the notion of how "well" a player plays in general, and deviations from the mean to how "consistently" that player plays. They encounter the idea of calculating the average absolute deviation from the mean as a way to describe variability in data.