6th Grade Statistics Project: Analyzing Zombie Virus with Dot Plots and Mean

I created this project as a way for my 6th graders to practice their statistical skills. They loved it! They get to pretend to be epidemiologists studying a virus outbreak that is turning people into zombies. It's a fantastic way for students to see how statistics is used in the "real world" - they were also very interested to learn about the field of epidemiology.

The Project:

Students are given data about infected people who are quarantined in an airport. They are also given two maps of the US and a worksheet to guide them through the analysis. Students get to determine:

- Where the virus is originating

- Which patients are likely to become zombies

- Which symptoms are most common

and advise a newly infected patient on their outcome.

Students practice:

-Creating dot plots, a bar graph, and a box plot

-Determining mean, median, mode, and range

-Evaluating the usefulness of the measure of central tendency based on the data’s distribution

-Describing and interpreting their findings

The preview shows all of the pages in the student worksheet - except for the data chart, the maps, and the slides. It took my students about two 45 minute class periods.

This product has been updated to include:

#1. An answer key with sample responses.

#2. A section that requires students to create a box plot

#3. An easy-to-print PDF version and an editable doc version so you can edit to meet your needs.

#4. An editable slide-deck you can use to launch the activity

#5. Improved formatting and spacing

Tip: I recommend uploading the zipfile to google drive so you can easily save the documents.

It's really fun! The students loved poring over the data and maps - Let them highlight the "zombies" and the "recovered" patients with different colors. Please let me know how it goes and whether you have any suggestions!

If you enjoy this, check out the Alien Algebra Activity for another fun end-of-year math lesson.