ARE STUDENT BACKPACKS TOO HEAVY?

Backpack Investigation ModelCompare and analyze data

What’s the question to investigate?

Ideas:Do students at my school carry backpacks that are too heavy?Who carries heavier backpacks?Do heavy backpacks cause pain for students at my school?How many students carry overstuffed backpacks?

My question example

Which grade level is at the most risk for carrying too heavy of backpacks?

My hypothesis—6th graders

What is the sample?

Boys vs. girls Students who:

6th vs. 7th vs. 8th graders ride the bus walk to schoolride bikes to schoolcar riders

Tall vs. short Athletes vs. club members

What is the sample size?

Questions to consider:Will you have enough time to gather the data

from your sample?Will your sample be large enough to be

representative?Will your sample help you answer your

question?Do you have – or can you borrow – the scales

or other materials to collect the data?

What is the collection plan?

Student #

Weight

BP Weight

Boy Girl Grade Athlete

Club

1 123 22 √ 7 No No

2 98 10 √ 8 √

3 120 18 √ 6 √

4

5

6

7

8

9

My data collection procedure

My group will collect weights of 60 students—20 students each from 6th, 7th, and 8th grade.

We will ask our Assistant Principals for permission to use the stage at breakfast time.

We will set up 4 scales on the stage. Students will be chosen at random from the grade sections where they sit. Each member in my group will record data for 15 students.

We will record more information just in case we want to look at more data.

My sample data

Data in Excel

My graph choices

Data Analysis

6th 7th 8th

Mean 32% 28% 7%

Median 28% 25% 10%

Mode None None 0

Range 56% 41% 20%

Interquartile range

12% 28% 82%

MAD 17 12 4

Conclusion

Based on the data, we see the mean and median of the 6th graders are higher than the other grades. There is also more variability in the data for 6th grade, which means there are many students who are carrying backpacks that are far from what is recommended by doctors. The box plots and bar graph show clearly that 6th graders carry too heavy of backpacks.

My suggestion for helping 6th graders is to have an assembly with some doctors who can show them the results of heavy backpacks and to have their teachers assign homework to clean them out every week.