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Guessing Correlation Coefficient Game

State testing has thrown my teaching off so much lately.  I usually try to keep all of my Algebra 1 classes in the same place, but that just hasn’t been possible these past few weeks.

Algebra 1 is currently working with scatter plots and regression.  My 6th hour class finished super-early compared to my other classes, so I pulled up a game on the SMARTBoard that asked them to guess the correlation coefficient of a scatter plot.

Here’s the link to the website I used.  The website loads four different scatter plots.

The four scatterplots each have the same four choices, so it is essentially a matching activity.  I really like that the site tells you the historical chance of error below each problem.

I had students volunteer to come up to the front of the classroom and play along.  Each student would click their answers on the SMARTBoard and click “Check answers.”

If the student got all four answers correct, he/she got to pick a piece of candy out of my prize bag.

My kids got really into this activity.  Even the kids who weren’t playing at the SMARTBoard were following along.  There were numerous times when a kid in the audience gave the person at the board a really big hint.

I definitely want to include this as part of my main curriculum next year instead of a random filler activity!

Unknown

Friday 31st of January 2020

Honestly, I love the game but I feel like there are cheats to it. I got all of them right the first 15 times I tried this, and I'm in 6th grade and just barely learning this.

Unknown

Friday 31st of January 2020

I do like the class competition though!

Unknown

Tuesday 18th of April 2017

I do a version of this. I show the whole class a scatter plot and each student guesses the r value. Their score is the absolute value of the difference between their prediction and the true r. We do several so they add up each of their rounds' scores. Lowest total wins.

Sarah Carter (@mathequalslove)

Tuesday 18th of April 2017

LOVE how you made it a class competition. Stealing for next year!

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