Tasks | Early Adolescence | Infant Mortality

Tasks - Year 10

Infant Mortality   by Peter Cazalet, Collie SHS

Phase of Development:   Early Adolescence

Learning Area/s:	Mathematics
Strand/s	Substrand/s
Chance and Data	Summarise and Represent Data Collect and Organise Data
Working Mathematically	Contextualise Mathematics Apply and Verify
Brief Description:	Research task to look at factors that may effect Infant Mortality.
Expected Outcomes:	For the closed activity suggested, students should find that the variable showing the strongest linear relationship with Infant Mortality was Literacy Levels which can result in an interesting discussion with students on the value of education.
Context:	Country Senior High School Limited access to computers so students needed to rotate through computers in the school library. We have a set of 20 Casio CFX 9850 Plus Calculators.
Learning Activities/ Experience:	Students could required to consider which of a list of factors was most likely to be related to Infant Mortality. They were then required to collect information for a number of countries. Data could be collected from a Multimedia Encyclopedia, Internet or any other source. When I did the task, data was collected in the following categories: Country Hospital beds (People/bed) Urban Population (%) Per Capita Income (000's $) Literacy Levels (%) Infant Mortality (Deaths per 000) Once students collect the data they could: Tabulate the data (Spreadsheet or Stat Menu of graphics calculator). Present scatter graphs. Interpret graphs by looking for strength of linear relationship. Report on their findings. Note: This exercise could be modified for Year 12 Discrete Mathematics students as an assignment question and include the calculation of the correlation coefficient. It provides an example of using the Lists from the Stat Menu of their Graphics Calculator.
Resources:	Learning Technologies: Multimedia Encyclopedia, Spreadsheet, Graphics Calculator (Casio CFX9850 Plus)
Practical Frameworks/ Templates/ Worksheets:	This is a fairly directed task prescribing what factors students should consider. Obviously this need not be the case in an open ended task where students could consider whatever factors they wish. The purpose of the task is to let students consider a list of factors and use the technology to present an argument.
Assessment & Evaluation:	Students are required to present an argument as to which of the factors they feel is most likely to effect Infant Mortality from the list of factors given. This involves Presenting data from countries of their choice. Representing the relationship between each variable and Infant Mortality. Stating their findings and justifying their claim . . . if they made one.