So my understanding data class basically needs to take a quiz soon and but I wanted to build in a little review and preview some of the concepts from the next one. I also for some reasons wanted to have a joke in the class, so I created this worksheet about a barbecue. Analise knows that 200 people are coming, so she asks 20 of the people how many hotdogs they will eat, and then afterwards the uses either the mean, median, or mode to come up with an estimate of the amount of hotdogs they will need and how much they will cost (if they are $4 for an 8-pack).

The catch? Oh right I forgot. One of those twenty people is 2011 hotdog eating champion Kobayashi. So while the rest of the twenty people in the group tell Analise to order 1, 2, or at most 5 hotdogs, Kobayashi plans on turning the barbecue into some kind of super-competitive “sausage party.” The kids notice the problem with Kobayashi in the sample and suggested that we remove him from the data set. In order to compare they find the mean, median and mode for both scenarios and see what is going on.

Towards the end of the lesson when students were talking about the eliminating Kobayashi from the set one student angrily asked/questioned the title of this clog. I didn’t engage her blurt, but I kind of smiled, for a second. It was like when someone validates how hard you worked on your outfit with a compliment. At the same time, I would feel weird if students see some of these assignments as labryinths that I create to direct them to one place. How do I let them know they are discovering mathematics authentically and not doing really convoluted “answer-getting”? I’ll let you know if I figure it out.