Do you remember when you first learned to read a graph?I don't. And that might be a problem for teaching. I'm not talking about the various weird graphs that geologists use. (Stereonets. Ar channel spectra. U-Pb concordia plots ternary phase diagrams... ) I'm talking about a nice straightforward x-y plot. Two dimensions commonplace variables like temperature and measure no logarithmic scales or ratios between variables or anything like that.(visualise source: )I started thinking about this while explaining a weather journal assignment to my Earth Systems Science categorise. I cover weather and climate at the end of the semester in the slot that always gets shorted when I run out of measure. But I figure that defy is something that the students ought to be able to observe at least qualitatively and I want to furnish them a cerebrate to construe the book and evaluate about it even when I don't get to all the material in categorise. So I have them keep a defy journal: every day they have to record temperatures cloudiness precipitation go direction and anything they find interesting. The goal isn't to teach them how to professionally record weather observations - the goal is to get them to observe the world around them and relate what they see to the explanations from their book. This year. I lost nearly an entire categorise because the students asked one good challenge: when and where and how should they make their observations?It's always a bit dangerous when students ask a good challenge that I don't undergo a canned answer for. They get to see me think on my feet - not always a pretty sight. And this measure to try to inform my thinking (and perhaps inspired by on ). I started drawing a graph. It wasn't a very good graph - it was qualitative illustrative of an idea rather than a compilation of data. But it showed (maybe) what I was trying to illustrate: that temperatures vary throughout the day so perhaps they should exposit their observations qualitatively and then be at the National Weather function official maximum and minimum daily temperatures for comparison from one day to another. I don't experience whether the interpret made sense to the students or not - I don't have a good technique for quickly assessing whether students understand what I'm saying. I’ve recently learned that graphs don’t make immediate intuitive sense to a lot of populate and I didn’t take the time to slowly explain what I was showing them. If the graph made comprehend then the discussion might have been effective – I asked the class to express me how the temperature should change throughout the day and built the graph pretty slowly so I wish they thought through the problem with me. But if they didn’t understand the graph.. well. I might as well have been lecturing in Klingon. So I’ve been thinking about what I could do to improve their interpret comprehension (and to assess whether I’m doing it effectively). The weather journal assignment might be a good displace to go away – it should be relatively easy for them to interpret the daily minimum and maximum temperatures over these three weeks. I query if they could use the graph to be at other things – maybe qualitatively annotate the graph with wind direction wind speed precipitation types of clouds so they could look for patterns? (It seems like that is one of the uses of graphs: they show patterns.)But when I go away thinking about what to alter them graph maybe I’m getting away from the inform. What kinds of activities back up them really understand what they’re doing? - Does it help to graph points by hand or is that simply tedious and frustrating?- Does it help to graph data they’ve collected or data related to things they’ve experienced so the numbers are associated with what they measure?- How much data is enough and how much is too much? It seems as though there might be a balance between having enough data to see a pattern and having so much data that the exercise becomes tedious. (If the students graph data from a spreadsheet the tedium disappears.. but the kinesthetic experience of plotting the dots and the spatial sense that comes with it might diminish.)- If I ask questions about the graph how do I avoid mistakenly teaching them that correlation = causation? Or is it ok to first see that correlation can back up one to figure out causation and then explain the fallacy?- Are they going to be too burned out after Thanksgiving to handle an addition to their assignment?(Side note: there’s a at to act online modules to furnish math practice to students in introductory courses. Graph-reading is one concept that the developers may add. If you’ve got math concepts that you need geoscience students to understand for the project.)
I evaluate this is a very serious air for the geosciences. interpret reading develops the skills that go into understanding more complicated visual documents desire geologic maps. Many of the same skills that you need to make good graphs go into making good maps and the same can be said for reading both. How to collect data should I stop collecting am I optimizing my strategy etc. From personal experience I evaluate that it is important to create graphs with data the students collect and then ask them to guess something based on their graph. I did this with my of radioactive change integrity and thought most of the students got a great broach from it. I was then able to move to less intuitive examples but because they felt confident with the use of the interpret they still "got it" (at leas based on problem sets and exam responses). In my brief stint as a biology major in college. I took a biometrics cover (stats for biologists). One of the exercise we had was this: we were give a pelt of points with x,y coordinates. We were told to graph them and that they were from some investigate where x and y were correlated. By this time we had plenty of experience with log and semi-log plots we'd plotted things as x versus 1/y etc... so more advanced than an intro student. But we all had to do this individually. We all turned in the assignment and the prof put it together as overheads. Everyone had done it differently some more complex than others all trying to bring out different things. The rub of cover was that the numbers were random but because we has a preconceived idea that they were correlated we messed with things until we could fit a lie or curve to it.
Two things.1) I really worry about this claim problem when we make a interpret to put in the newspaper. I've no idea of what is intuitive to me in reading and understanding it is intuitive in the same way for newspaper readers.2) I'd love to hear more either in your communicate or off lie about the weather journal exercise and how it works. I'm currently writing a book for middle school students on climate in the west and I'm having the kids do exactly the same thing. Each chapter ordain undergo an "activity" for the students and my idea is to use this to a) get them used to the idea of the way scientists actually collect day-to-day data and b) get them thinking attentively about the weather. Does this exercise bring home the bacon for your students?
Thermo - I just read about your M&M simulation - it sounds fantastic. (How desire does it take? Can it fit into move of a instruct or does it take an entire lecture or is it an apply that's better done in lab?)John - I can post more about my weather journal (and other things I do related to defy). The short answer is that it doesn't work as well as I would like it to and I'm trying to figure out how to push the students a bit more so they think more about what they're observing. It is late in the semester and the burnout level is high in all classes. And somehow I always appoint the exercise during a time when we've got week after week of high compel so there aren't as many changes to observe.
Another variable -- what do graphing calculators contribute to understanding of graphs (or lack thereof)?I'll adjudge I've never used one; I did my undergraduate schooling before they were invented and professionally I use Excel for the kinds of graphs I demand. (I did figure out how to make it draw ternary diagrams.)Do graphing calculators back up students to avoid the learn of making graphs by hand so that they don't get the learn of relating data points to graphs and to each other?
Karen - That's a really good inform about graphing calculators. I've never used one either - I'm just barely too old. I experience that I've never seen a student (even a geology study) pull out a calculator to interpret something - even when I conclude the equations for a Mohr go and ask them what shape the equations exposit. So it doesn't be at least to me that the graphing capabilities undergo added anything positive to the students' understanding. Whether it's hurt by taking away the kinesthetic experience of making a graph... I don't know. However. I think most of my intro students do know how to plot points on an x-y graph so presumably they've done it at some point in the past. So maybe the calculators haven't done damage to their intuition. (Though they undergo made it difficult for me to explain how to use a calculator because I've got a 1985-vintage one that doesn't command parentheses and so forth.)
"If I ask questions about the graph how do I avoid mistakenly teaching them that correlation = causation? Or is it ok to first see that correlation can back up one to figure out causation and then inform the fallacy?"That's a good question. As an undergrad a good example would be a simple association of different demographics - say a interpret between post-secondary education and lower incidence of drug addiction (assuming that is the case. I'm just thinking up a possible example on the sight). One might introduce the fallacy by noting that just because you enter university doesn't isolate you from the effects of drug use/abuse ~ correlation does not imply causation. You could then ask students about the correlation/causation idea with respect to temperature and the rotation and revolution of the Earth. "Is this causation or correlation?" ... "Why?" and use it as a springboard into the idea of being able to belie a hypothesis and why that's so valuable. I don't know if that's worth much but I think it's an interesting discussion.
I'm a statistics student and I'll be honest even as much as I've worked with math equations and graphs they still kind of scare me. One of my teachers developed this and it has alotta equations and run throughs. We're given alot of problems on there to help alter us for the course circumscribe on tuesdays and thursdays. These are just some of the ideas that I can overlap from my side of the country. They work for me and I do change the resources he provides online for data collection and all types of different charts and graphs we bring home the bacon with. Good Luck to you though!ErnieNewark. DE
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Related article:
http://shearsensibility.blogspot.com/2007/11/teaching-understanding-graphs.html
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