What’s In A Name?

1. What’s In A Name? Most parents spend little time worrying about the number of letters in the names they choose for their children. Yet, there are times that length matters. What are some of those times? The longest name appearing on a birth certificate is: Rhoshandiatellyneshiaunneveshenk Koyaanfsquatsiuty Williams Shortly after “Rho” was born, her father filed a amendment that expanded her first name to 1019 leers ad her middle name to 36 letters. Can you think of a nickname for her? 

2. Problem 1.1What do you think is the typical number of letters in the full names (first and last) of the students in your class? • Gather data about the total number of letters in the first and last names of students in your class. Be prepared to share with the class in 4 minutes. • Find a way to organize you data so you can determine the typical name length. (for the whole class) • Write some statements about your class data. Note any patterns you see. • What would you say is the typical name length for a student in your class? • If a new student joined our class today, what would you predict about the length of that student’s name?

3. One group displayed their graph in a line plot Name lengths of Ms. Jeckle’s students 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Number of letters One group displayed their graph in a bar graph Name lengths of Ms. Jeckle’s students 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Frequency 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Number of letters

4. PROBLEM 1.2 • Answer the following questions in your notebook, based on the information you see in the graphs: • Write some statements about the name lengths fr students in Ms. Jeckle’s class. Describe any interesting patterns you see in the data. • In what ways are the two graphs alike? In what ways are they different? • How does the data from Ms. Jeckle’s class compare with the data from your class? • How can you use each graph to determine the total number of letters in all the names? • Fahimeh Ghomizadeh said, “I have the most letters in my name, but the ba that indicates the umber of letters in my name, but the bar that indicates the number of letters in my name is o of he shortest. Why?” How would you answer this question? • Suppose a new student named Nicole Martin joined Ms. Jeckle’s class. Hw could you change the graphs to include data for Nicole?

5. One way to describe what is typical or average about a set of data is to give the value that occurs most frequently. For example, in the data for Ms. Jeckle’s class he name length 15 occurs most frequently. Six students have 15 letters in their names. Notice that 15 has the highest stack of X’s in the line plot and the tallest bar in he bar graph. We call the value that occurs the most frequently the mode of the data set. Example: 9, 9, 9, 11, 11, 12, 12, 12, 13, 13, 13, 13, 13, 14, 14, 14, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 16, 17 The mode is 15. 1.3 Identifying the Mode

6. 1.3 Identifying the Range When describing a data set it is also helpful to give the lowest value and the highest value that occur. The spread of data values from the lowest to the highest value is called the range of the data. In Ms. Jeckle’s class the range of name lengths is from 9-17 letters or a difference of 8. Example: 9, 9, 9, 11, 11, 12, 12, 12, 13, 13, 13, 13, 13, 14, 14, 14, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 16, 17 Range 9-17 or a range of 8 because 17-9 is 8.

7. What are the mode and range of the name-length data for your class? Problem 1.3 Here are 15 students in a class. The mode for the name lengths for the class is 12 letters and the range is from 8 letters to 16 letters or a range of 8. Determine a data set of name lengths that has this range and mode. (Just make it up!) Make a line plot to display your data. Use your line plot to describe the shape of your data. Write an explanation of this shape (bell shaped, clustered, etc.) and identify any clusters or outliers.