The SHS Algebra Nation rocked the “annual” Spaghetti and Marbles Lab on correlation and regression yesterday. (See gallery below.)
Students investigated the number of marbles needed to snap various numbers of strands of raw spaghetti. They repeated the experiment with 1, 3, 5, and 7 strands of spaghetti. After recording the number of marbles it that they dropped into a styrofoam cup that was hanging by a paper clip from the spaghetti (before snapping), they made a scatterplot of the data on their graphing calculators. After verifying a strong positive association, they performed a linear regression on the data to obtain a line of best-fit regression equation.
y = mx + b
Using the regression equation, students interpolated by predicting the number of marble required to snap 4 strands of spaghetti. The they extrapolated by predicting the number of marbles required to break 50 strands of spaghetti.
A fun time was had by all, as I heard many students still talking about the activity today.
Life-long learners making us all Redskin Proud!