Thanks to a YouTube video created by Sean Saffell (link here), I now know how to create a boxplot in Desmos. This is REALLY useful, because Google Sheets candlestick charts don’t include the median, and in my opinion, just don’t look that great. If you’re teaching your students about five number summaries, you might find that boxplots in Desmos is the way to go. Plus, you can even copy and paste a column from Google Sheets directly into a list in Desmos, saving yourself a lot of work.
Here’s a picture of the kind of boxplot you can create in Desmos. In the second week of school, students surveyed each other and collected data in my Algebra 1 class. We’re using Illustrative Mathematics. One of the survey questions was, “What’s the farthest place you’ve been from home?”
I used an online distance calculator to find out distances, then recorded those numbers in a Google Sheet. Afterwards, I copy and pasted into Desmos. Then, I went back in and labeled points with the place names.
Here’s a picture of the graph with our farthest places:
Here’s a graph with grid lines included:
Hope you find this useful if you’re teaching students about Five Number Summaries!