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Little beyong L6 scatter diagrams they are likely need to know, if you are a good group and you want to extend their knowledge, you might look at things like
- Non linear correlation
- Spearnman's Rank
- PMCC
- Regression Lines
How about an Inverse relationship and drawn as a curve- Us scientists would appreciate it!! Our stuff is full of them even at KS3 and the kids look on blankly as the points hit the graph.
Kevinberry03How about an Inverse relationship and drawn as a curve- Us scientists would appreciate it!! Our stuff is full of them even at KS3 and the kids look on blankly as the points hit the graph.
If you've really got the time, you could do that - but make crystal clear you're doing it as extra help for their science GCSEs.
The need to know never to fit to a curve in maths.
Give a few points at either end.
Discuss issues with the results - not enough data to plot points, how many points do you need so you have a line of best fit?
How accurate is a point? Introduce margins of error (this comes from extensive work as a scientist when we had to do 100 experiments just to get 1 data point accurate to +/ - 1% accuracy)
How would that look on a scatter graph?
Life is rarely a neat correlation.
We used to have a data point with a little line going up and down showing the possible range of that value. How would this affect the results?
I just re-read the OP and only just noticed you're a trainee.
If you do choose to teach something that's for the benefit of the scientists, make sure your lesson plan brings this out and you've highlighted it as cross-curricular. Make sure you go see the science department and find out exactly what they teach so you're completely in line with them. If you do that and document it, it will be good evidence for your standards.
And if you don't do that, how will you answer when your observer asks you what objective the fitting to a curve activity was aimed at and would you mind pointing to it on the scheme of work, please?
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