Inside Collection: Collaborative Statistics Teacher's Guide
Summary: This module is the complementary teacher's guide for the Central Limit Theorem chapter of the Collaborative Statistics collection (col10522) by Barbara Illowsky and Susan Dean.
The Central Limit Theorem (CLT) is considered to be one of the most powerful theorems in all of statistics and probability. It states that if you draw samples of size
Suppose
At the beginning of the chapter, there is a dice experiment. Together with the students, do the experiment. The example consists of rolling 10 times each, 1 die, 2 dice, 5 dice, and 10 dice and averaging the faces. Draw graphs (histograms are OK). This experiment, most of the time, shows that, as the number of dice increase, the graph looks more and more bell-shaped. Because the samples taken are usually small, you will not necessarily get a perfect bell-shaped curve. However, the students should get the idea.
It can be shown that the average amount of money one person spends on one trip to a particular supermarket is $51. The averages follow an exponential distribution.
Find the probability that the average of 40 samples is more than $60.
You can also do examples for sums. We, the authors, do not do sums because of time (we are on a quarter system). Help the students to find the probability that the total (sum) amount of money spent by 10 people at the supermarket is less than $500. Also, help them do a percentile problem.
If you want to teach the z-score formulas for averages and sums, they are:
Assign the Practice in class to be done in groups.
Assign Homework. Suggested homework: (averages) 1a - f, 3, 5, 9, 10, 11a - d, f, k, 13a-c,g-j, 16, 17, 19 - 23