This lesson gives students the opportunity to experience a simplified version of how mathematicians and scientists use data analysis and statistics to determine how much our planet is warming due to climate change. Students will create a data table and scatter plot and use linear regression to make predictions about the future.
Step 1 - Inquire: Students look at a global temperature anomaly graph and discuss how this graph shows a trend of warming temperatures.
Step 2 - Investigate: Students analyze real-world temperature data from a city by creating a data table and scatter plot.
Step 3 - Inspire: Students connect what they discovered about their city to the overall trend of rising temperatures.
Positives
Additional Prerequisites
Differentiation
This lesson develops students' statistical skills to analyze weather data, compute trends and variance, and fit scatter plots in regression to understand climate variability in U.S. cities. All materials embedded in the lesson are thoroughly sourced. Accordingly, this lesson is recommended for classroom use.