Zoe #203 Pre-Algebra, per. 7 Anthropometry Have you ever heard of anthropometry?

Anthropometry is the scientific study of the measurements and proportions of the human body. Diane France, an anthropologist, is like a bone detective. She uses the lengths of certain bones in the body to calculate the heights of humans. Mrs. Schwarz decided that my partners class of fifteen people should measure their bones to predict their height. All of the class and six other teachers participated in the project. What Mrs. Schwarz wanted them to learn was how important math is in our everyday lives. On day one and day two, the focus was on the radius bone. The class measured their radius bone to the nearest half inch from their elbow crease to their wrist bone. They also measured their height to the nearest half inch. My partner, Maxs, radius was 8 in. and his height was 60 in. After everyone was finished measuring, they wrote the data collected down on a chart. Next, they found the mean- 8.3 in. (The average of the data collected), median- 8.5 in. (The middle value of a range of numbers) , mode- 8.5 in. (The number that occurs most in a set of data), and range- 1.5 (The smallest number in a set of data subtracted from the largest number) of all the data that was collected (See insert for graph). On the second day, the class made a graph of the data collected with everyones radiuses on the x-axis and height on the y-axis. The black points on the chart were for the boys and the yellow for the girls. There is a line on the graph that helps predict other heights. When you follow you finger up from a radius, where it meets the line is the height. On day three and four, the class focused on the tibia and humerus bones. They measured their tibias from the point of the inside anklebone to the knee and their humeruses from the tip of the elbow to the shoulder to the nearest half inch. Maxs tibia was 13 in. and his humerus was 11 in. Then the class used formulas to predict their height with the humerus, tibia, and radius lengths. My partners predicted heights were 63.4 in. with the tibia formula, 62 in. with the humerus formula, and 64.15 with the radius formula. After predicting, my partner found that the closest prediction to his actual height of 60 in. was the humerus formula, which predicted 62 in. On the last day, my partner then calculated Christinas height with the radius formula. Her height calculated with the radius formula came out to be 60.1 inches. Christinas actual height was 59.5 in. Next, Mrs. Schwarz gave a sheet to the class with the 6th grade teachers and Mr. Phoxs radius, tibia, humerus, and height on it. Using the formulas given for male and female height

(See insert for formulas), the class predicted the teachers height (See insert for chart and results). They circled the closest prediction for each person and then found that the overall most accurate way of predicting was with the humerus formula. In conclusion, Mrs. Schwarz wanted us to understand how large a role math plays in our everyday lives. If I were to give advice to Diane France or any other anthropologist, it would be to always measure accurately. Making sure that you collect accurate data is very important. It is very difficult when calculations come out wrong because someone did not measure correctly. One of the most interesting things about this project is seeing how some formulas worked better than others did. I also enjoyed this project because it taught me new things about math and science.