IB MATHEMATICS

HS MATH DEPARTMENT

REAL LIVES: HOW WILL YOU LIVE?

A 12 WEEK SIMULATION ON THE ROLE OF STATISTICS IN THE SOCIAL
SCIENCES

Benchmarks:
• Students can compute/construct and interpret mid-interval values, upper and lower
boundaries, frequency histograms and stem-and-leaf plots.
• Students can determine the measures of central tendency for simple discrete data and
for grouped discrete and continuous data.
• Students can calculate measures of dispersion, including range, interquartile range
and standard deviation.
• Students can use the line of regression to make predictions and conjectures.

ESLRs: Effective Communication, Critical Thinking, and Global Citizens.

Primary Objective: for students to understand how statistical information can and does
impact meaningful decision-making

Secondary Objective: for students to conjecture about the correlation between reliable
statistical data and an individualʼs quality of life

General Guidelines:

Simulation will start on September 7 and end on Nov 25 at 3:15 pm.

You are to play 2 virtual lives throughout the simulation.
You are to play 7 years of each of your virtual lives every week and produce a short
report which follows the “report guidelines” listed below.
Each report must be accompanied by a short weekly reflection to be posted in the
corresponding blog of the course website.
This work is individual. You may engage in collaborative discussions about the virtual
lives of your peers, but should do so only with the express purpose of learning about
their own experiences (so as to enrich your own).
A final presentation (either a PP or a video or some other creative end-product) must
be put together as a way to conclude the projectʼs experience (more details about this to
be released in late September).
Although some time may be given each week to work on this semester project, most
of the work will have to be done outside of class, so be ready to plan ahead and make
time for this major piece of assessment.
Get into characters! As you experience your virtual lives, try as much as possible to
understand the circumstances of how your characters live and why they go through the
hardships, successes, and life-changing events that are part of their ways of life. In
particular, be attentive to how statistics is used to determine, to a large extent, the
quality of their lives.
You are expected to turn in all reports on time.

Mathematics = multiples way of seeing the world Mr. Fuentes

IB MATHEMATICS HS MATH DEPARTMENT

Once your characters are born, you must immediately let me know their names and
their countries of origin. We will create a pie chart illustrating the distribution by
continent of all virtual characters.
You may be expected, at times, to do more research about the countries in which your
characters were born, so be prepared to dig deeper.
Donʼt forget that, above all, your focus should be in trying to understand the role of
mathematics in the simulation.
Make sure to save your work constantly; I really donʼt want any situations where you
lose your progress because you forgot to save; and to add to this, it would be wise of
you to store a couple of backup copies in separate flash drives or computers.
Remember, when it comes to backing up your work, there is no such thing as too many
backup copies.

Weekly Report Guidelines:

Each report, titled “My Virtual Lives, Weekly Report X” must answer the
following 5 questions: 1) Discuss a minimum of 3 significant events that
happened to you (in each of your lives) and explanations of these events (why did
they happen to you? how do statistics play a role in these events?) 2) Compare
and contrast your 2 lives. Why and how are they different? How do statistics
influence the 2 lives that you are living?; 3) Study the 9 components that
determine your “lives” in the Stats tab of the game. How have they changed and
what actions/decisions did you make that could have resulted in them either
increasing, decreasing, or staying the same? 4) Pick one or two statistics from
each countryʼs profile: explain what they mean, look for historical data going
back a 5-15 years and determine how they compare to the region that they are
part of (such as Africa, the MIddle East, Asia, etc); you should consider measures
of central tendency and spread when presenting your analysis. 5) Choose any
data sets of interest in either of your lives and present them in graphical form
(could be pie chart, histograms, bar graphs, line graphs, box and whisker plots,
stem and leaf plots, etc); make sure your graphs are properly labeled (with
appropriate units of measure) and visually appealing.
The report must be done in word (and if Excel graphs are required), they must
inserted into your report
The report must be saved as “repX_yourinitials” and then attached to the
comments box in the corresponding blog of the course website
You must also write up a short 250-300 word reflection to be typed into the
comments box in the corresponding blog of the course website; the reflection
must address the following questions: a) what statistical fact was most
surprising? why? b) were any of the statistics misleading? how can you tell?; and
c) what did you learn about your avatar this week that might help you make better
decisions for the following week? Make your reasoning is based on mathematical
analysis (to the extent that this is possible).
All reports will be due on Mondays no later than 8:15 am

Mathematics = multiples way of seeing the world Mr. Fuentes

IB MATHEMATICS HS MATH DEPARTMENT

By the time the simulation is over, you will have written approximately 12
reports (depending on how long you live of course).

Final Presentations (sneek peek):

They will take place the first week of December

You will have to chronicle your 2 lives through some creative means (PP,
Video, Skit, etc); think of it as releasing autobiographies (through a mathematical
lens) of your virtual lives
You will have to show, through your presentations, that you understand how
statistics was a major component of how you ended up living your lives
In other words, you have to make sure the audience (your peers and me)
understand that you understand how mathematics plays a role, to a certain
extent, in determining oneʼs quality of life (expectations include using appropriate
terminology, interpreting graphs, and making informed mathematical predictions
based on reliable, historical data).

BEST OF ALL, OF COURSE, HAVE

FUN AND MAKE THE MOST OF
THIS EXPERIENCE.
Any feedback you can give me to make this a better experience next time around
will be most appreciated. Just drop your comments in the corresponding Real
Lives Feedback blog of the course website.

Mathematics = multiples way of seeing the world Mr. Fuentes