Bringing Babies Into A Statistics Lesson

I’m non specially into babies (apart from my ain niggling terrors darlings) precisely I learn at a girls’ schoolhouse in addition to 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 y'all thus please. I’ve already blogged near my Bibonacci starter. There’s likewise this pregnant moo-cow attempt enquiry (part d is the entirely S1 attempt enquiry I've e'er seen which requires students to know that 68.3% of usually distributed information is inside 1 measure difference of the mean).

Edexcel S1 Jan 2002, Q5

I used this enquiry inward an S1 lesson when I was heavily pregnant, much to the entertainment of my students. It led to a give-and-take near the gestation periods of other mammals (those pitiable elephants!). We’d clearly hold back a fairly strong correlation betwixt size in addition to gestation - when I learn a lead 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 retrieve when my due appointment for my get-go immature lady came in addition to went, I tried to respect 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 respect much online at the fourth dimension precisely 1 time to a greater extent than I experience it could brand for an interesting lesson.

If y'all are a rear in addition to then y'all may move familiar amongst ‘the ruby-red book’, which is the Personal Child Health Record issued to all babies born inward the UK. This is a child's main tape of immunisations, development, wellness reviews in addition to thus on. At the dorsum of the ruby-red mass are the ‘UK-WHO Growth Charts’ where scatter graphs are plotted of the child’s tiptop in addition to weight against their age. On these scatter graphs are centile lines, to allow parents in addition to 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 amongst newborn babies, thus it occurred to me that the increment charts could help me explicate the concept of percentiles to my S1 classes.

The ruby-red mass contains this description of the centile lines on the increment charts:

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

While I was thinking near how to pattern an activeness for my S1 course of didactics based on these charts, I discovered that the writer of The Chalk Face has beaten me to it amongst this dainty 'Quartiles in addition to Percentiles' activity. And @srcav has already written this weblog postal service 'the mathematics of parenthood' near the potential to run increment charts inward his teaching.

Incidentally, the ruby-red 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 directly thus I'll expire along to develop these ideas about other time...  Do permit me know if y'all tin think of whatever other baby-related information to add together to my theme.

My mini-mathematicians.  July 2014.