{"id":696,"date":"2016-05-07T00:27:55","date_gmt":"2016-05-07T04:27:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/?p=696"},"modified":"2016-05-07T00:27:55","modified_gmt":"2016-05-07T04:27:55","slug":"searching-for-fraud-fun-group-data-analysis-activity-for-mmmr-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/2016\/05\/07\/searching-for-fraud-fun-group-data-analysis-activity-for-mmmr-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Searching For Fraud – Fun group data analysis activity for MMMR review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I rolled out\u00a0my Fraud Detection Activity. It was A LOT of set up to make it a year ago, but it is great to use for where my kids are now. At this point my kids\u00a0need to transition from thinking about computing\u00a0MMMR (Mean, Median, Mode, Range) to\u00a0thinking about USING\u00a0MMMR to solve bigger problems. It also sets up for a great conversation about outliers which is where I am going next! Let me break down the activity.<\/p>\n

Searching For Fraud<\/h4>\n

Here is the opening paragraph:<\/p>\n

After a recent scandal on wall street, bankers from around around have started making a\u00a0number of suspicious transactions around the country, and we as a class have been asked\u00a0to help figure out which information should be used to help find the culprits.<\/p>\n

Our job is to look at all of the data and try to find transactions that are little higher, or a little\u00a0lower than what would be considered normal. So the first thing you should do as an expert is\u00a0to look at your data, and talk about which would be the most useful of the number strategies\u00a0to use in this situation:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Students will have\u00a0to look at sets of transactions to see if any of them appear to be different from the rest because they might be\u00a0fraudulent. Each student is given a sheet with 11 numbers and can use the tools they have learned to guess which numbers seem suspicious. All of the sheets have one or two clear outliers, and some others that are murky, while the rest of the numbers cluster closely around the mean.<\/p>\n

At the end of their individual work, the students are told to get in groups of three and compare all of the work and use that to refine the numbers they think are suspicious. Students know they need to do the work correctly, and since they all have different numbers, groups can’t just copy if someone\u00a0has trouble computing. Since all the initial calculation has been done, the groups have to decide the best way to discuss and present all of their data and thinking on chart paper along with a visual representation of their data.\u00a0Yesterday the four groups\u00a0used Unifix cubes as a quick visual representation.<\/p>\n

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The activity has a lot of good aspects to it, and a lot of things to improve.<\/p>\n

Good things:<\/p>\n