Bringing Babies Into A Statistics Lesson

I’m non especially into babies (apart from my ain lilliputian terrors darlings) merely I learn at a girls’ schoolhouse together with the bulk of my students response rather good to babe materials (apologies for the stereotyping). It’s surprisingly tardily to characteristic babies inward your statistics lessons if yous thence please. I’ve already blogged virtually my Bibonacci starter. There’s besides this pregnant moo-cow evidence query (part d is the exclusively S1 evidence query I've always seen which requires students to know that 68.3% of unremarkably distributed information is inside i measure divergence of the mean).

Edexcel S1 Jan 2002, Q5

I used this query inward an S1 lesson when I was heavily pregnant, much to the entertainment of my students. It led to a tidings virtually the gestation periods of other mammals (those misfortunate elephants!). We’d clearly await a fairly strong correlation betwixt size together with gestation - when I learn a conduct chances I'll run into if I tin pattern an interesting activeness using this information (I wonder whether anything similar is done inward biology).

Speaking of gestation periods - I recollect when my due appointment for my starting fourth dimension immature lady came together with went, I tried to discovery statistics online to tell me how far overdue I mightiness go. I wanted to know the probability of babe arriving at 42 weeks. I didn’t discovery much online at the fourth dimension merely i time to a greater extent than I experience it could brand for an interesting lesson.

If yous are a nurture together with thence yous may live on familiar alongside ‘the ruddy book’, which is the Personal Child Health Record issued to all babies born inward the UK. This is a child's principal tape of immunisations, development, wellness reviews together with thence on. At the dorsum of the ruddy mass are the ‘UK-WHO Growth Charts’ where scatter graphs are plotted of the child’s tiptop together with weight against their age. On these scatter graphs are centile lines, to allow parents together with wellness professionals to compare the child’s measurements against other children of the same age. On a few occasions, I’ve been asked to explicate the pregnant of these charts to friends alongside newborn babies, thence it occurred to me that the increment charts could assistance me explicate the concept of percentiles to my S1 classes.

The ruddy mass contains this description of the centile lines on the increment charts:

More information virtually the charts is available inward this fact sheet from the RCPCH.

While I was thinking virtually how to pattern an activeness for my S1 bird based on these charts, I discovered that the writer of The Chalk Face has beaten me to it alongside this prissy 'Quartiles together with Percentiles' activity. And @srcav has already written this spider web log ship service 'the mathematics of parenthood' virtually the potential to role increment charts inward his teaching.

Incidentally, the ruddy mass says ‘someone who has been appropriately trained should consummate the increment chart’. Hmm. I promise they're non suggesting that members of the populace are incapable of adding a dot to a uncomplicated scatter graph?!

Right, my babe is awake similar a shot thence I'll proceed to develop these ideas approximately other time...  Do permit me know if yous tin think of whatever other baby-related information to add together to my theme.

My mini-mathematicians.  July 2014.