In this math activity, learners are challenged to create aluminum foil boats that will hold plastic bears until the boats sink. The lesson serves as a fun, hands-on way to collect data. Data from two attempts is collected and used to make two class box-and-whisker plots with some surprising results. This lesson guide includes questions for learners, assessment options, extensions, and reflection questions.

This Desmos activity provides an interactive opportunity for students to work with data as represented  between data and the box plot that results from it. Students walk through an investigation on interpreting center, spread, and the impact of outliers on various box plots. Students will also use their inference skills to compare two box plots. The teacher has the ability to pace students on slides, pause them, and promote whole class discussion based upon individual student responses. The teacher can also anonymize students names to provide for more risk taking in their responses.Students may be reminded of their prior knowledge of a box plot from middle school before starting this lesson.This original lesson was created by Bob Lochel and modified by Emily O'Brien.