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Fun and Hands-On Linear Regression Activities

I want to share several fun and hands-on linear regression activities I worked through with my Algebra 2 students. Links to blog posts with more details and free downloads are provided.

hands-on linear regression activities

Linear Regression Activities

Linear Regression with the True Colors Personality Test

I had originally wanted to have my students complete the True Colors Personality Test at the beginning of the year, but I ran out of time. I ended up introducing the test as a way to ease into linear regression.

We took turns saying our names and our “true color” by table. We did this several times and recorded the number of students vs the time it took to say everyone’s name and color. This was a great way to illustrate what linear regression is. Read more about this activity here.

True Colors Personality Test linear regression activities

Bouncing Tennis Balls Linear Regression Lab

I modified this bouncing tennis balls linear regression activity from an Illuminations activity from NCTM. Students are given a tennis ball to bounce for two minutes.  Every ten seconds, the number of bounces is recorded.  

tennis balls linear regression activities

After collecting data, students perform linear regression on their data to find various values through interpolation or extrapolation. I learned several important lessons while doing this activity with my students which I wrote about in this blog post.

I also provide a free downloadable handout that I used with my students. We glued the results in our interactive notebooks.

Twizzlers Linear Regression Lab

twizzlers linear regression activities

The idea is simple.  Give students a twizzler to eat.  Before students take a bite from their twizzler, they measure its length.  After each bite, they remeasure the twizzler until they have eaten the entire thing.  They use this data to create a scatter plot and perform a linear regression.

I shared the downloadable file I created for this activity in my blog post about the Twizzlers Linear Regression Lab.

April A Mills

Wednesday 6th of January 2021

Could you please email me the Twizzlers Lab? I've used it in the past but for some reason it won't load.

amills@thayer.k12.mo.us

MLewi

Monday 6th of November 2017

Hi! I know that this is an older post, but I have a question about the tennis ball activity. When computing your linear regression, what values did you use for x and y? Time and total bounces? Time and interval bounces? interval bounces and total bounces? Thanks for your help.

Unknown

Saturday 10th of October 2015

Do you have any pictures of student work? I would love to see what they came up with!

Sarah Carter (@mathequalslove)

Monday 12th of October 2015

This was a while back, so I don't. Sorry!

Ms. Malone

Monday 14th of September 2015

I love the ideas here. I want to try both the tennis ball and Twizzlers activities. I don't know if it is my computer, or browser, but I can't see any of the links that you referenced in your blog. Is there any way that you can email me the activities? Thanks! My email is kmalone@atown276.net

Sarah Carter (@mathequalslove)

Tuesday 15th of September 2015

E-mail sent!

Siobhan

Monday 14th of October 2013

It's funny how different kids can be. I did the Twizzler activity last week as well (saw it at a conference last spring). My kids LOVED it. I even got an "I love math" out of one of them! Honestly, I could spend all year on regression because there are so many neat things to do.

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