Masterpiece 3

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was a scientist and an artist. He thought that the span of someone’s arms was equal to their height.  Why do you think he was interested in working out body proportions?  Do you think Leonardo’s theories still work today?  Was Leonardo’s theory that a person’s height is equal to their arm span true for New Zealand students?

Students investigate whether a person’s armspan is equal to their height using their own measurements or CensusAtSchool data.

This activity explores the following key ideas:

• Carrying out a statistical investigation following the PPDAC cycle
• Posing a statistical question
• Describing the data set in terms of shape, spread and middle range
• Finding a relationship between variables
• Supporting claims with evidence

They are also encouraged to consider the reasons for variabilility in the data.

Resources:

• Student worksheet
• Teacher instructions

Achievement Objectives

• Level 5
  • S5-1Plan and conduct surveys and experiments using the statistical enquiry cycle
    • A determining appropriate variables and measures
    • B considering sources of variation
    • C gathering and cleaning data
    • D using multiple displays, and re-categorising data to find patterns, variations, relationships, and trends in multivariate data sets
    • E comparing sample distributions visually, using measures of centre, spread, and proportion
• Level 6
  • S6-1Plan and conduct investigations using the statistical enquiry cycle
    • D making informal inferences about populations from sample data