Roller Coaster Math with the fx-991CW - Some Summer Statistics!

It's summer! As a kid living in Virginia, I looked forward to summer for many reasons, but one was the ability to go to amusement parks. King's Dominion outside of Richmond , VA and Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, VA, were the two amusement parks that were the 'big deal' in my day. They probably still are I would imagine. The Rebel Yell (renamed to Racer 75 now) - at the time King's Dominion's biggest wooden roller coaster - could scare the life out of me every time and I loved it!

Screenshot from https://www.eeps.com/zoo/

I was thinking about summer and amusement parks, pools, beaches, etc. I haven’t been to an amusement park in years…and sadly, these days, I would avoid rollercoasters at all costs due to motion sickness (and admittedly, a lot of fear!)  I think I have become my mother these days - the one who carried ‘all our stuff’ while we went on the rides! Anyway, with these thoughts of summer and roller coasters in particular, I remembered a great site I always went to to get data to use with my students when teaching in Virginia - the Eeps Data Zoo. This was a great site for real-world data, and I remembered there was a nice data set on roller coasters, so today's post is using that roller coaster data to demonstrate how the fx-991CW Classwiz scientific calculator does statistics and allows you to also visualize the table, the statistical plot and do a regression, as well as calculate the statistics relevant to the data.

Screen shot from https://eeps.com/zoo/cages/RollerCoasters.html

The  has several data sets that were used in scientific research and is now connected with CODAP as well. You can cut/paste into excel spreadsheets or data software, or if using a handheld calculator that has the ability to enter statistics, you can enter the values manually as well. The roller coaster data is data on 15 different roller coasters around the world, both steel and wood, that compares their largest drop, their top height, their total length and their top speed. 

So you can do lots of comparisons - i.e. only the wood ones, or only the steel ones or speed vs. height, etc.  There are also additional links to roller coaster data if you want to research other roller coasters.

The fx-991CW scientific calculator that I use in the video below is really amazing because you can take the data, make the table, and do the statistical calculations needed for your comparisons. But - because of the QR code, you can also see the plot of your data on ClassPad.net  and visually look for patterns and relationships. Additionally, the statistical graph that is created allows you to then do a regression as well, so you are getting the benefits of a graphing calculator with a simple scientific calculator, which is awesome. Especially if you are a teacher and your students have these, you can be up at the front and display the results and have small group/whole class discussion about the visualization of the data they just entered, and so students get multiple representations and discussion about the relationships they are seeing. It's just one possible way to work with this, and the video shows using the emulator software and ClassPad.net so that the QR code quickly pops up and goes immediately to the visualization. Great as a whole-class demonstration and discussion lead-off.

The video below demonstrates entering data in the Statistics Menu of the fx-991CW, looking at the statistics, then using the QR code to see a visual representation of these and looking at regression. In the video, I am really only doing one comparison of the roller coaster data - there are so many more you could explore, so I encourage you to do so!