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.

This unit of four lessons from NCTM's Illuminations lets students conduct surveys and represent data in a variety of ways. They also find and compare measures of center. The lessons center around a food court, where students create and use menus in a meaningful way. Topics covered include bar graphs, line plots, and pictographs, measures of center, and probability of events. Individual lessons link to related tools where appropriate, and include questions for students, assessment options, and teacher reflection questions.