Soil Moisture Activities:
The Data Game
Purpose: Practice estimation to avoid mistakes.
Emphasis: Data Quality
Total Training Time: 5 minutes (only enough time to introduce activity)
Training Location: Inside
Connections: Concept is transferable to any module
Expected Outcomes
- Avoid common mistakes in units and magnitude due to unfamiliarity
with the numbers that are realistically plausible.
What to do and how to do it
- Hold up cup of water and ask: How much water is this?
- Have class break into teams.
- Using soil or water, have each group (secretly) determine true weight.
- They report either the true weight or a misleading weight.
- Other groups have to accept stated value or contest it.
This forces each student to evaluate the reasonableness of what might
have been a purely abstract number.
Depending upon skill/grade level false reports may have to be off by
orders of magnitude at first but soon they should be able to estimate
weight to within a factor of 2.
Bring in common items and talk about their weights to give students a
point of reference.
Extensions
- Select any quanity (length, volume, weight) and have each group either
report true quanity or quanity + error to try to trick/mislead class.
v. Jul 5, 1996