What’s My Number?

In this activity students develop their intuition for mean absolute deviation.

We start with a simple question: “Can you guess my number?” Students submit a guess, receive feedback (too low, too high), and continue revising until they guess the target number.

Students then analyze parallel dot plots showing their and their classmates’ guesses over time in order to make connections between the “spread” of a given dot plot and the mean absolute deviation for that data set.

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