A-Maze-ing work!!

Whew - I'm exhausted!!! I took a vacation over Spring Break (first one since 2003!!) and I got *nothing* done for school!!! I have a feeling that this week will be really busy :(

However, the show must go on!! Tomorrow night at Uni, I will be teaching about 2-sample inference. I am going to try a new activity that I've been tossing around in my mind, so I thought I'd share it with you guys and maybe it's something you can use.

The other day I was searching through my cabinets and found some laminated mazes that I must have used once upon a time. An *a-ha* moment hit me as I realized that I was about to start inference for means and I could use the mazes as "data", having the students time each other through the maze. I will expand this activity at the AP level for having the kids do 1-sample inference as well, but at Uni, I've already done 1-sample, so this activity sheet only refers to 2-sample inference.

Maze Activity

The Maze I used (page 1)

UPDATE: I had my students use their cell phones, but at the high school, I need to remember to put the "stopwatch" program onto their TI83s that I got at a workshop. Also, if you use this, at the college level, I do more with critical values and rejection regions than we do at the high school level.


Have a great week!!!

P.S. On vacation, we had the chance to tour the "MoneyFactory" in Fort Worth, TX. Did you know they use a systematic sample to check the finished currency for errors? Every 16th bundle of 100 bills is checked and all of the bills in that bundle have the same letter at the end of the serial number. If there is an error, the entire bundle is pulled and destroyed and a replacement pack (called a "star note") is put in its place. You have about a 2% chance of having a star note in your possession :)