Lessons
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Who Counts as an American?
National Population and IdentityStudents explore how governments and societies use data to define identity, citizenship, and belonging — examining Native perspectives on blood quantum, federal definitions of...
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Reading the Language of Law as Data
Media, Language, and PowerAcross 15 historical US laws, students analyze patterns in justification language to discover how governments frame restriction as protection, pairing a categorical language...
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The Data History of the Attention Economy
Media, Language, and PowerStudents investigate how media have competed for audience attention over time, weighing evidence from newspapers and radio against historian Tim Wu's "attention merchant" idea...
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Booms and Busts: A Century of American Population Data
National Population and IdentityStudents use census data from 1910–2020 to investigate how historical forces shape population change, interpreting trends and connecting shifts like the Great Depression and the...
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Vietnam Photojournalism as Data
War, Dissent, and Civil LibertiesStudents use six Library of Congress Vietnam War photographs as nontraditional data, applying a 5×5 grid protocol to code quantifiable variables from each image, calculating a...
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WWI Propaganda and the Data of Dissent
War, Dissent, and Civil LibertiesStudents treat wartime language as data, using historical newspapers (1917–1919) to categorize propaganda techniques, compare them to the suppression of dissent under the...
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The Data Behind Industrial America
Industrialization and the Gilded AgeBetween 1860 and 1910 the United States became the world's largest industrial economy — but who benefited? Students test two competing primary sources (Carnegie's Gospel of...
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Reading the Receipt: The True Cost of the Boston Tea Party
Revolution and RebellionStudents analyze an East India Company invoice documenting the tea destroyed during the Boston Tea Party to investigate the event's economic impact. They calculate the value of...
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Planetary Distance and Scientific Notation
Expressions & EquationsStudents interpret real astronomical data and represent very large numbers in scientific notation, exploring NASA moon–planet distance data in CODAP and analyzing patterns...
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Classifying Quadrilaterals
GeometryStudents build and refine decision trees to classify objects efficiently with yes/no questions, then apply the thinking to quadrilaterals — grouping by properties and, in CODAP,...
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Stem-and-Leaf Plots on Candy Prices
Statistics & ProbabilityStudents use real-world pricing data to compare candy costs across two stores with back-to-back stem-and-leaf plots and data-science practices, analyzing distributions by...
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Coin Flip Probability
Statistics & ProbabilityStudents develop probability as a measure of likelihood by investigating chance processes through simulation, using a coin-flip simulation to compare theoretical and...
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Scatterplots and Roller Coasters
Statistics & ProbabilityThe purpose of this lesson is to help students explore relationships between variables using real‑world data by creating and interpreting scatterplots. Students will analyze...
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Ratios with Similar Triangles
GeometryStudents investigate similar right triangles by measuring side lengths and calculating ratios, discovering that equal-angle triangles have proportional sides (consistent...
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Solving Equations Using Basketball Data
Expressions & EquationsStudents use real basketball data to explore how equations can model performance and support decisions — classifying "good" performance with graphs and summary measures,...
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Properties of Operations and Screen Time Data
Expressions & EquationsStudents use properties of numbers to organize, analyze, and draw conclusions from real-world data — treating the properties not as rules but as tools to make sense of data,...
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Proportional Reasoning
Ratios & Proportional RelationshipsStudents use ratios, percentages, and segmented bar graphs to compare groups fairly, identify hidden patterns, and investigate how knowing one variable can help predict another.
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Percentages and Nutrition Labels
Ratios & Proportional RelationshipsStudents explore percentages through nutrition labels, calculating and interpreting percent values, investigating how rounding affects reported data, analyzing a real McDonald's...
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Rates in Air Travel
Ratios & Proportional RelationshipsStudents explore rate through commercial air travel: starting from their own speed estimates, they confront variability, then use real flight data to calculate rates, analyze...
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NCAA Integer Operations
The Number SystemStudents use integer operations to represent and analyze college-basketball statistics, investigating "home-court advantage" by creating a new variable (wins minus losses),...