Analyzing Temperature Trends for U.S. Cities

Students will collect temperature data from the data archive of the National Climatic Data Center website.  They will choose three cities with similar latitude or longitude and compare the average temperatures for each month of the year.  This activity was used in the following article:  Drier, H. S. & Lee, J. K. (1999). Learning about climate: An exploration in geography and mathematics. Social Studies and the Young Learner 12(1), 6-10.

Mathematics Topics: Students will calculate the mean, median, and range of monthly average temperature. They will make a line graph and bar graph of the data and discuss the importance of the data range when considering a mean.

Mathematical Thinking: Students will conjecture a relationship between a city’s geographical location and it’s temperature. They will analyze the temperature from each city, compare the temperature trends between all three cities, and discuss similarities and differences.

Technology: Students will locate data on the internet, copy and paste into a spreadsheet, change the text data into columns, use spreadsheet formulas to calculate the mean and median, create line graphs and bar graphs.