Objective

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to understand and apply statistical concepts to analyze stock shares.

Materials and Prep

• Pen/pencil
• Calculator
• Computer with internet access
• Stock market data (can be accessed online)

Before starting this lesson, it is important to have a basic understanding of fractions, percentages, and basic arithmetic operations.

Activities

1. Research a stock of your choice and find its current share price.

   Calculate the percentage increase or decrease in the share price over the past month.

   Write a brief summary of your findings and discuss the factors that may have influenced the stock's performance.

2. Create a bar graph to compare the performance of multiple stocks over a specific time period.

   Analyze the graph to identify the stock with the highest and lowest percentage change in share price.

   Explain the possible reasons for the differences in performance.

3. Calculate the mean, median, and mode of a set of stock prices for a particular day.

   Discuss how these measures can help investors understand the overall trend and stability of the market.

   Examine the impact of outliers on these measures.

Ninth Grade Talking Points

• "Statistics is a branch of mathematics that deals with the collection, analysis, interpretation, presentation, and organization of data."
• "In the context of stock shares, statistics can help us make sense of the vast amount of information available and make informed investment decisions."
• "Percentage increase or decrease in share price is a common way to measure the performance of a stock over a given time period."
• "Bar graphs are useful for visually comparing the performance of different stocks or other data sets."
• "Mean, median, and mode are measures of central tendency that can provide insights into the overall behavior of stock prices."
• "Outliers, which are extreme values in a data set, can significantly affect these measures and should be taken into consideration."