Weather - it

1
Weather - its all around us and its always
changing.
This makes it a great resource for gathering and
organizing data with graphs.
2
Graphs help us organize information and data in
an understandable way. In todays New Times we
are surrounded by data, from sports statistics to
politics to numbers presented in science
textbooks.
Graphs are the visual representations that focus
on the relations between the objects of
representation in terms of a part-whole
structure.
Koulaidis (p.1998)
3
What are we trying to teach our students?

1. Collect and organize appropriate data
2. Represent the data graphically, by selecting the
   appropriate graph
3. Read and interpret graphs
4. Evaluate and analyze information presented in
   graphs that are found in textbooks, newspapers,
   digital media, etc. Look for intent behind the
   graphic representation of the data.

4
When students make graphs from data they collect,
graph interpretation is easier and more
interesting because it is based on actual
experience with the numbers involved.
The experience of interpreting their own graphs
gives students the skills to interpret graphs
made by others.
5
Children begin by

• recording data,
• computing the range of data (the difference
  between
• two sets of data to give a sense of how spread
  out they are), and
• finding the central tendency (mean) to get an
  idea of a typical value.

Day Outside Temp (ºF) Inside Temp (ºF) Difference (Out minus In) (ºF) Notes
1 80ºF 72ºF 8ºF sunny
2 71ºF 71ºF 0ºF cloudy rain
3 86ºF 73ºF 13ºF windy
4 89ºF 70ºF 19ºF sunny
5 79ºF 69ºF 10ºF cloudy
6 95ºF 80ºF 15ºF broken a/c
6
How do we help students decide which type of
graph is best for the data?
In the same way that educators use concept maps
or graphic organizers, chapter outlines, webbing,
and structured overviews to help students
navigate text, so can graphs and charts be used
as tools to organize and present data.

• Circle map
• Double bubble
• Tree map
• Flow map

7
(No Transcript)
8
Vocabulary Needed for Decoding Graphs

• Key/legend (symbols)
• Axes (X, Y and Z)
• Gridlines
• Scale
• Data Labels
• Data Table
• 2 Dimension
• Variables and their relationships to each other

9
Does the scale make a difference in how you react
to the data?
Do the graphs below show the same information?
Do the pictures suggest the same idea?
Is one graph misleading?
Does the line graph tell you anything about the
temperatures in between the times the readings
were taken?
10
Students were asked to guess what part of the
total amount of water on Earth (unchanged since
when the Earth was formed) is in the oceans, ice,
groundwater, atmosphere (clouds) and lakes
rivers.
Where in the World is All the Water?
11
The students then graphed their predictions
against the actual amounts, dramatically
illustrating their misconceptions about Earths
water sources.
12
Pie Charts
1 Oceans 2 Ice water 3 Groundwater 4
Atmospheric water 5 Lakes River
13
Back to temperature
From simple to..
14
complex!
Note a example of nominalization used in the
context of analyzing this type of data is rate
of change of temperature
15
Clues that something is fishy about a graph

1. The axis should begin with zero so that the
   measurement scale is shown whole.
2. If one of the axes is not labeled, you do not
   really know what is being displayed.
3. The numbers are identified by their units.
4. The X to Y axis scaling is not fair, i.e. one
   axis has been stretched out.

16
Proportion of Page comprised of Images versus
Words
High Image
High Image. Low Word
High Image. Moderate Word
Elementary School
Middle School
High School
Low Image
High Word
Low Word
17
Juggling 2 variables at once
18
What does this graph tell us?Do you believe the
data?
Who collected the data? Where and how were the
temperatures taken?
19
Predicting the Future
20
Importance of titles and captions

• Human activities are changing the environment.
  Global temperatures have risen by 0.6 degrees
  Celsius in the last 200 years.
• Does scale make a difference in this graph?
• This graph shows carbon dioxide emissions
  increasing the last 130 years.
• What kind of impact does the image have on the
  reader?

21
Reader Beware!

1. Graphs have more impact than the raw data because
   they are visual.
2. Graphs represent interpretations of data. If the
   data has been specially selected, then the
   interpretation is only of the selected data.

3. Data can be plotted to create an impression of
(or hide) a dramatic trend when in fact the data
does not support such an apparent change. 4. The
creator of the graph can influence the impact of
the information and therefore influence the
viewer.
22
What is the social cost of innumeracy and
illiteracy? The inability to deal rationally
with large numbers, or with the probabilities
and their graphic
representations associated with them, results in
misinformed government policies, confused
personal decisions, and an increased
susceptibility to pseudo-sciences of all kinds.
Paulos (1988)
23
There are cases where there is no dishonesty
involved, but where people are tricked into false
results by a lack of understanding about what
human beings can do to themselves in the way of
being led astray by subjective efforts, wishful
thinking or threshold interactions.
Cromer (1993)
24
Why do we care about visual literacy?
If our students do not understand and get meaning
from visual information, they will be excluded,
their point of view not considered, or they may
even manipulated into believing something not in
their best interest.