The Known Mix - A Taste of Variation

To create an environment in which all students have opportunities to notice, describe, and wonder about variability, this article takes a context familiar to many teachers—sampling colored chips from a jar—and shows how this context was used to explicitly focus on variation in the classroom. The sampling activity includes physical as well as computer simulations and has proven to generate lively discussion that highlights the tension between expectation on one hand and variation on the other.