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Famous People: Teacher Notes

MA.8.A.1.1

Conceptual Knowledge

Estimation
Graphing

Procedural Knowledge

Graph Data
Estimate

Problem Solving
Reasoning
Communication
Connections
Representation

How well do you know famous people in the news, on television or in the movies?

Students work individually.

Graph Paper

  1. The following list contains the names of fourteen famous people. Without talking to anyone, write down your estimate of the age of the person in the X column below. If you do not know the person, make a guess.

    Famous Person
    X
    Estimated Age
    Y
    Actual Age
    Michael Jordan    
    Aaron Carter    
    Nancy Reagan    
    Mister Rogers    
    Justin Timberlake    
    Sandra Day O’Connor    
    Chelsea Clinton    
    Tiger Woods    
    Britney Spears    
    Michael Jackson    
    Jerry Seinfeld    
    Sarah Michelle Geller    
    Senator Strom Thurmond    
    Cher    

  2. Look at the attached table and record the ages in the Y column.
  3. How well were you able to estimate the ages of these famous people? To help answer this question, make a scatterplot with your estimate of the age on the horizontal axis and the actual age on the vertical axis.
  4. Where will a point lie if you estimate it correctly? Draw in the line that represents estimates that are 100% accurate. What is the equation of this line?
  5. What does it mean if a point is above the line?
    ___________________________________________________________________________________
    In general, did you overestimate or underestimate?
    ___________________________________________________________________________________
    How can you tell this from your scatter plot?
    ___________________________________________________________________________________

As a result of this activity, students will be able to model the equation y = x.

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