Levels of Measurement Dry Erase Activities

Take your statistics students on a “field trip” to practice classifying variables according to their levels of measurement with this fun dry erase activity!

What Inspired This Activity

My statistics students were really struggling at classifying variables according to their four levels of measurement (nominal, ordinal, interval, or ratio) on their homework assignment, so I decided to make a Levels of Measurement Card Sort Activity to give them more practice.

In the process of making the card sort activity, I got to thinking that it would be really cool to come up with a set of questions that had a cohesive theme like the Emergency Room Card Sort for Categorical/Quantitative Variables that we did earlier in the week.

Since it was 9 pm on a Sunday night at this point and I kinda needed the activity for Monday, I turned to ChatGPT to help me come up with ideas for variables. I asked it for help creating levels of measurement activities focused on the movies, the Olympics, the zoo, the aquarium, and the theme park.

I was actually impressed with AI’s ability to help create these activities. I did have to scramble the results because ChatGPT had a tendency to always give the variables in the exact same order.

Activity Instructions

For each variable, determine if it is best classified as nominal, ordinal, interval, or ratio. Place a checkmark in the appropriate column of the table.

I placed two of these activities (the movies and the Olympics) in a dry erase pocket with the pages back-to-back.

I had students write their answers on the dry erase pocket, but you could also use this as a worksheet.

Using this Activity in the Classroom

I ended up using this dry erase activity for the first activity of the class period. Each student received a dry erase pocket featuring the Olympics and movies pages.

I had students work individually and check the boxes with a dry erase marker on the dry erase pocket. We all did the Olympics prompt first, then we went over the correct answers as a class.

Then, I had students complete the movies prompt before we went over the answers as a class.

After completing both of these, I had students complete the Levels of Measurement Card Sort Activity in their table groups.

Answer Key

Coming soon!