I created this project as a way for my 6th graders to practice their statistical skills. They loved it! They get to pretend to be epidemiologists studying a virus outbreak that is turning people into zombies. It’s a fantastic way for students to see how statistics is used in the “real world” – they were also very interested to learn about the field of epidemiology.

The Project: Students pretend to be epidemiologists investigating a zombie outbreak occurring in the United States. Students apply their statistical skills to determine:

• Where the virus is originating
• Which patients are likely to become zombie
• Which symptoms are most common

Students practice:

-creating dot plots, a bar graph, and a box plot
-describing the distribution of data
-determining the mean and mode
-evaluating the usefulness of the measures of central tendency based on the data’s distribution

You can purchase this fun activity here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/6th-Grade-Statistics-Project-Analyzing-Zombie-Virus-with-Dot-Plots-and-Mean-3111273