um....I must say, I agree with Barry that stem and leaf charts aren't the ESSSENCE of math, not that I would know what the essence of math is

constructivist math does massive quantities of graph-making

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Jun 2006

hmm....

Saxon doesn't have them.

Histograms, in Saxon, are solid bars without spaces in between...

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Jun 2006

Stem and leaf plots don't have Xs that I know of.

I love them, too!

There's something bizarrely riveting about them.

More than that, though, Rudbeckia is right; they're a great way for students to "see" the raw data. Smartest Tractor uses them, too.

Google Master drew it correctly (I'm pretty sure).

I wonder if those are called histograms?? I have a memory that histograms are solid bars that are touching each other (as opposed to a bar graph, which has solid bars with spaces in between).

I should go check Saxon 8/7.

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Jun 2006

Stem and leaf plots shouldn't have Xs, come to think of it.

Let's say that the grades earned on the test were: 63, 72, 76, 76, 78, 81, 85 then my stem and leaf plot would be:

6|3 7|2668 8|15

I use them when reporting grades to my students; this way they have not just the class average but all the raw data, too.

-- RudbeckiaHirta - 23 Jun 2006

I always called these things histograms back in Introductory Physical Science in high school.

-- KathyIggy - 23 Jun 2006

Something like this? Where some of them are X (big) and some are x (small)?

            8
            7
            6               X
Number of   5               x
students    4               x
receiving   3           x   X
this grade  2           x   x
            1           X   X
            0           x   X
              0 ... 70  75  80  85 ...
            

-- GoogleMaster - 23 Jun 2006

I LOVE stem and leaf plots.

-- RudbeckiaHirta - 23 Jun 2006

A mathematician I know told me that after 40 years of being in mathematics, he finally learned what a "stem and leaf" plot is. (I guess his son was doing them in school). He said that somehow he's gotten along fine in mathematics without knowing it all these years.

-- BarryGarelick - 23 Jun 2006

war stories part 3

Another good one: Ms. K docked points for differently-sized Xs on those stem-and-leaf X-graphs they have the kids make.

You know, the kind where you have a number line on the bottom of your paper, and then you put Xs above each number to indicate how many of each number you have - like "3 people received grades of 75," "6 people received grades of 80" and so on, represented by 3 Xs above the 75 and 6 Xs above the 80.

That's not very clear.

Somebody better start taking off points around here quick, or this whole site is going to descend into blithering incoherence.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.



war stories
war stories part 2
war stories part 3
no more pencils no more books
war stories part 4



-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Jun 2006

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• Posted by: CatherineJohnson
• LogDate: Jun 23, 2006 @ 09:16