Year 7 Use Harry Potter to explore Maths Problems

Year 7 Maths students have used popular novel, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to explore data recently.

Students were read an excerpt from the book, describing the giant character Hagrid, and then embarked on an investigation of data asking themselves what information did they need to know in order to determine the size of Hagrid?

Many interesting discussions ensued about the types of data needed, and which type of an average (mean, median or mode) would be most useful to find his size. Students measured their heights, and used this information to find the size of Hagrid based on the average size of students in each class. This then led into further work using data and graphs.