Activity
Thanksgiving Travel Trends activity: Desmos line graphs part 4
Expand your Desmos skills! Create a line chart with 3 lines from a table in Word!
When learning to use a new digital, such as Desmos, students and educators first need to learn how to use the tool. Example: The first post, Using a data table to create a line graph in Desmos, has step-by-step instructions and video tutorial on how to create a line graph using Desmos. Next, students apply this technical knowledge to complete a math assignment. Example: The second post, Thanksgiving Travel Trends activity: Math and Desmos line graph is used as a teaching post that applies what was learned in the first post to an activity about flight travel trends over the Thanksgiving weekend. Students will then be given the opportunity to independently complete a similar activity. Example: The third post is Thanksgiving Car Travel Trends activity: Desmos line graphis similar to the teaching post, but does not include the step-by-step instructions; students are expected to complete this assignment independently or with very limited support. Finally, this last post will build on the student’s tech and math skills by adding complexity to the graph by importing data from a table and creating multiple lines in the graph.
Activity background
Thanksgiving week is one of the busiest times to travel by air. As you plan your trip to visit family for the holiday, choosing less popular travel days can help you avoid peak flying times. This not only reduces the stress of crowded airports but can also save money, as plane tickets tend to be more expensive on high-demand travel days.
Why use a line graph?
Take a look at the Daily U.S. Air Travelers Around Thanksgiving Week Table.
What is the busiest travel day? What is the least busy travel day?
Image: Daily U.S. Air Travelers Around Thanksgiving Week for 2021, 2022 and 2023 Table
Accessible version of the Daily U.S. Air Travelers Around Thanksgiving Week table in Word.
Navigating through this table to find the answers is a nightmare with so many numbers to keep track of! However, if the numbers are put into a line graph with three different lines (one line graph for each year), is it easier to find the peaks and lows to determine the busiest and least busy travel days?
Activity 1: Review plus creating a line graph from a table
If you want to review how to create a line graph, use the Daily U.S. Air Travelers Around Thanksgiving week 2023: Rounded document. This is a basic table displaying data from one year. This table has only Three columns: Day of the week, Day Number and Number of Travelers 2023 rounded to the nearest 1.0 million. The graph has only one line (data for 2023). The dates run from the Day 1 (Thursday before Thanksgiving) to the Day 15 (Thursday after Thanksgiving).
Since tables in Desmos must be numbers (cannot be a letter or word for “Thursday before Thanksgiving”), use 1 – 15 representing Day 1, the Thursday before, Day 2, the Friday before, etc. The Word version of the data table does have a column for Day of the Week, which will NOT be copied and pasted into the Desmos table.
If needed, the student can watch the video tutorial for JAWS in the first post to learn how to insert data from a table in Desmos. Written directions for Activity 1 are provided below (meant for the instructor and does not give the screen reader commands). Provide limited instruction only if absolutely necessary.
Instructions
- Go to Desmos.com
- Open the Graphing Calculator
- Select the Plus button, a pop-up menu appears
- Select Table
- If pasting data that has more than 2 columns, click on the square to the right of y1 and type “y2”. Repeat to add the desired amount of data columns.
- In the provided Word document, highlight the desired columns; select only the data!
- Do not select the first column, Day of the Week
- Do not select the column header (Day of the Week, Day Number and Number of Travelers)
- Note: If this is confusing for your student, remove the column headers and the Day of the Week column from the given table
- Do select the column with numbered days and the data under each year
- Copy the highlighted data
- In Desmos, click on the box below x1 and paste the data
- Desmos will automatically place all the data in the correct table format and the data points will appear in the graph
- To add the lines, long press on the Hide Column button or Control + Shift + O (Circle with dots beside the y2)
- Toggle Lines on
Image: Hide Column Button
- To resize graph, press the wrench symbol on the far right of the graph.
Students should determine the numbers used to resize the graph. Below are the numbers I used in my example graph:
- X: -1 to 16
- X Label: Days
- Step: 1
- Y: -.5 to 4
- Label: Travelers by Millions
- Step: (leave blank or .5)
Image: Settings options with sizing numbers, x-axis and 7-axis
Teaching Hint: Resizing the graph
To determine the numbers:
- There are 15 days listed in the table, so the X axis should have at least 15 numbers, automatically starting at 0. It is helpful to have a little space at the left and right of the graph. Start with -1 or 0 for the range on the left side and add 1 to 15 days to make 16 the range on the right side. “Step of 1” means that the numbers are whole numbers and increase by 1. (Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, etc.)
- The range on the Y axis is 1.5 million air travelers to 2.9 million air travelers. Since this is a teaching graph, it is suggested to start with 0 so students can have a better perception/mental map of the graph. There also needs to be room at the top in order to add the graph title. In this example: I used the range of .5 to 4 (million air travelers). Since the range starts with .5, the step automatically increases by .5 (half a million, million, million and a half, etc.)
Add the title to the top of the line graph: Daily Air Travelers Around Thanksgiving: 2023 Rounded
Save the line graph using the same title.
Image: Final version of the Daily Air Travelers Around Thanksgiving: 2023 Rounded line graph
Link to the Daily Air Travelers Around Thanksgiving: 2023 line graph in Desmos
Ask questions!
What was the busiest day? Why do you think this is the busiest air travel day around Thanksgiving?
What was the slowest day? Why do you think this is the slowest air travel day around Thanksgiving?
What is the second slowest day?
Accessing graph with a screen reader
When accessing the graph with a screen reader, it is critical that students listen to the initial announcements about the graph. The screen reader will announce items such as the title of the graph, x-axis range and label, y-axis range and label and the number of audio curves (peaks in the graph).
Audio Trace is a powerful accessibility feature that allows users to explore a single equation or an entire system of equations through sounds. In this line graph example, audio trace allows users to hear the graph, giving a quick overview of the trend and the size of the graph. Each data point is given a tone, the pitch of the tone is associated with the y-axis – the higher the data point, the higher the pitch. The tones change in different quadrants and a popping sound occurs at points of interest.
To activate audio trace mode, focus on an expression line and press Alt + T (or Option + T on a Mac). Then type H to hear the graph. You can change the volume and speed of the audio trace and you can navigate data point by data point.
Activity 2: 3 Year Trend Rounded
Practice makes perfect! After reviewing using Activity 1, let’s expand our skills by creating a graph of the Thanksgiving air travelers around Thanksgiving week over a three-year period, using rounded numbers for simplicity. This requires creating 3 different lines; one for each year. Follow the directions above for copying and pasting a table into Desmos.
Teacher hints
Make each line distinct by choosing different types of lines a different color and a different texture. Example: dotted, dash or straight line. Different textured lines are helpful, especially if embossing the line graph.
Be sure to give the graph a unique name, so that it is easy to distinguish this graph from the graph in Activity 1 and Activity 3.
Ask questions!
Once the graph is completed, give the student time to explore the graph before asking questions such as:
- Describe the trend
- Why was there a consistent dip across all three years?
- What was the one anomaly? (Hint: Look at Day 7.)
- Peak travel day(s)?
- Less traveled day(s)?
- Best day to travel back after Thanksgiving and why?
Activity 3: Nitty gritty details
Rounding is good to give an overview or general idea of line graph, but what if you need the nitty gritty details? Rounding to 1.0 million leaves a lot of wiggle room when analyzing the numbers!
Create a line chart using the actual number of travelers in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Compare this graph with the rounded 3-year graph.
Ask questions!
What are some examples where the detailed numbers provide more information? Examples:
- In the rounded data table, 2021 and 2022 both had the rounded number 1.4 million, which makes it appear that the number of travelers did not increase from 2021 to 2022.
- Using Table 3 with the real numbers, find the number of travelers on Thanksgiving Day 2021 and the number of travelers on Thanksgiving Day 2022. How many more travelers were there? (18,260 more travelers)
Image of Air Travelers Around Thanksgiving Week: Expanded Desmos graph
Link to Air Travelers Thanksgiving Week: Expanded in Desmos
Resources
- Using a data table to create a line graph in Desmos
- Thanksgiving Travel Trends activity: Math and Desmos line graph (Part 2: Applying skills)
- Thanksgiving Car Travel Trends activity: Desmos line graph (Part 3: Independent practice)
By Diane Brauner
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