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Paper Airplanes: Collecting Data to Find the Best Model

Dr. Laura Kyser Callis

Curry College

Milton, Massachusetts

Consider downloading the measure app

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Today – Why Paper Airplanes?

  • GAISE calls for multivariable thinking
  • Multivariable thinking can start from Day 1 when we’re thinking about study design & data displays
  • Universal Design for Learning calls for Nurturing Joy and Play (7.3)
  • Paper airplanes are fun and joyful!

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Where in the curriculum?

  • Today, we’ll think about study design and use descriptive statistics and data displays

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Statistical Investigation Process

  • Ask a research question
  • Design a Study and Collect Data
  • Explore the Data
  • Make Inferences & Draw Conclusions
  • Look back & forward

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Research Question

  • Which is the best paper airplane model?
  • But… What do we mean by best?

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Research Question: �Which is the best paper airplane model?

  • What do we mean by best?
  • Flies the furthest?
  • Stays in the air the longest?
  • Most reliable/ hardest to mess up/ requires least skill?
  • Does cool tricks?

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Design a Study

  • What kind of things influence how far a paper airplane can go?

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Confounding Variables

  • Wind
  • Angle of the throw
  • How hard it’s thrown
  • If it’s folded well
  • Type of material

In order to be sure that it’s the type of airplane that is impacting the distance, we want to make everything else the same.

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Controlling for Confounding Variables

Variable

How to control for it

Weather

Do indoors

Material

All same material

Individual Skill

Everyone does each airplane

Force behind launch

Launchers

Angle of launch

Clinometer –

everyone launch at 0 degrees

These controls could limit how useful our results are in other settings

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Where is this data from?

  • Pre-service teachers flew paper airplanes without launchers
  • Fifth graders flew paper airplanes with launchers
  • Each type of airplane was on a different color paper
  • Everyone folded their own airplane
  • Entered on a Google form, then cleaned by professor

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CODAP How To

  • Back Up How To Video

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Collect & Explore the Data in CODAP

  • Go to https://tinyurl.com/PlaneData25
  • Drag variable names to the graph
  • Which plane seems best? �Does it depend if we use a launcher?

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Begin thinking about Conclusions

  • Which plane do you think is best?
  • What in the graphs tells you that?
  • How does the way the data was collected impact your thoughts about conclusions?
  • There are differences, but also a lot of variation…
  • What else would you test?

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Collect Data: How to do in a class?

Will you have students build their own airplanes, or bring them pre-folded?

They will understand the differences in the designs better

It takes a while - videos and patterns can help, but they may need to you describe� and model each step with them

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Will you have students directly measure with an app or tape measure?

Or, you could lay out tape measures and only measure the distance along one direction

Or, have them fly each plane and give their general sense of which flew the furthest,

then look at previously gathered data

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How to collect the data in one place?

Google Form, one per flight – may need cleaning before putting in CODAP

Or, use existing data and have them “Insert” their own cases so their flights are represented

Desmos/Amplify could also work

How much time do you have?

How important is it that students connect their actions to the graphs?

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Links to patterns & how-to videos

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Thoughts & Questions?

  • How might you bring play into a statistics classroom?