Fathom is an exceptional tool for exploring data and statistics in all high school courses, including Advanced Placement® Statistics. The activity module Exploring Statistics with Fathom contains 50 student activities from basic to advanced statistics, and Fifty Fathoms: Statistics Demonstrations for Deeper Understanding contains another 50 classroom demonstrations.
Additionally, several free activities are provided here. Download Statistics Activities and Teacher Activity Notes. Access the Fathom files for these activities by selecting File, Open Sample Document, and choosing the relevant file from the folder "Teaching Math with Fathom." Descriptions of these activities are below.
- U.S. Census Data: In this activity you'll look at data about individual people gathered in the U.S. Population Census. You'll explore people's ages, marital status, and incomes in your sample and see if they are related.
- Random Walk: A random walk is a process in which, for every step, you flip a coin. Heads, you step east. Tails, you step west. On average, you'll wind up where you started—or will you? It depends on what you mean by average. In this activity you will simulate and explore the random-walk situation.
- Exploring Sampling: In this activity you'll learn about sampling with and without replacement. You'll use what you've learned to simulate the probability of drawing a pair from a deck of cards.
Rolling Dice: Sometimes when you sample or collect measures, you want to sample until some condition is met. In this activity you will explore the answer to the question: On average, how many times do you have to roll a die to get a six?