Exemplar 1

Exemplar 1 :

Time to Take Off

Objectives: To construct and interpret histograms by using data obtained from the
Internet

Learning Unit: Construction and Interpretation of Simple Diagrams and Graphs

Key Stage : 3

Materials Required: Internet and Excel

Pre-requisite Knowledge: Construction of histograms

Description of the Activity:

1. To arouse students’ interest, the teacher begins the activity by asking questions
about the Hong Kong International Airport and/or aeroplanes.

2. The teacher asks students to visit the web site of the Flight Information of the
Hong Kong International Airport at :
http://www.hkairport.com/eng/flight_info/FlightInfoFrame.jsp.
The teacher allows some time for students to browse the web site to have an idea
of the flight information.

3. Students find the schedules of departing flights from the Airport for a date
specified by the teacher.

4. Students collect the following data from the web site:

(a) number of flights taking off from the Airport in each hour,
(b) number of flights delayed in taking off from the Airport in each hour.

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Data Handling

5. Students complete Table 1 in the worksheet.

6. Students use the information in the table to answer the questions in the
worksheet and then use Excel to draw histograms on the number of flights taking
off and the number of flights delayed in each hour.

7. Discussions can be held among the groups in answering Question 6 for

comparing the two histograms.

8. To stimulate further discussion, the teacher can ask students whether there are
other types of graphs to represent these data.

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 Exemplar 1

Worksheet : Time to Take Off

Use the information on the web site of the Flight Information of the Hong Kong
International Airport at http://www.hkairport.com/eng/flight_info/FlightInfoFrame.jsp
to answer the following questions.

1. Use the information of flight departures on (day)/ (month)/ (year)

to complete the following table:

Number of flights Number of flights

Time Interval
taking off delayed
7:00 a.m. – 7:59 a.m.

8:00 a.m. – 8:59 a.m.

9:00 a.m. – 9:59 a.m.

10:00 a.m. – 10:59 a.m.

11:00 a.m. – 11:59 a.m.

12:00 p.m. – 12:59 p.m.

1:00 p.m. – 1:59 p.m.

2:00 p.m. – 2:59 p.m.

3:00 p.m. – 3:59 p.m.

4:00 p.m. – 4:59 p.m.

5:00 p.m. – 5:59 p.m.

6:00 p.m. – 6:59 p.m.

7:00 p.m. – 7:59 p.m.

8:00 p.m. – 8:59 p.m.

9:00 p.m. – 9:59 p.m.

10:00 p.m. – 10:59 p.m.

11:00 p.m. – 11:59 p.m.

Table 1

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Data Handling

2. From Table 1,
(a) what is the time interval with the highest number of departing flights?
(b) what is the number of flight taking off in this interval?
(c) what is the number of flights delayed in this interval?

3. From Table 1,
(a) what is the time interval with the lowest number of departing flights?
(b) what is the number of flight taking off in this time interval?
(c) what is the number of flights delayed in this interval?

4. Is there any relation between the number of flights taking off and the number of
flights delayed in the two time intervals of Questions 2 and 3? Explain briefly.

5. Use Excel to draw

(a) a histogram representing the number of flights taking off in Table 1, and
(b) a histogram representing the number of flights delayed in Table 1.

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 Exemplar 1

6. Compare the two histograms drawn in Question 5. Is there any relation between
the number of flights taking off and the number of flights delayed in other time
intervals? In which time interval is the relation more significant?

7. (For more able students)

Can you give some factors that may cause the flights to delay in departure?

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Data Handling

Notes for Teachers:

1. The web site contains information of flight departures for a limited period of
time only. Therefore, the teacher should check that the information for the date
specified still exists on the web site before the activity.

2. In this exemplar, the departure time is used. As an alternative, the teacher can ask
students to use the arrival time instead. Or, the departure time or arrival time of
certain airlines can be investigated to see if they are punctual or not.

3. Apart from investigating the time of departure or arrival, the number of in-bound
flights or out-bound flights can also be used for investigation. In addition, flight
information of other airports can be used for investigation, e.g. Incheon
International Airport of South Korea (www.airport.or.kr/intro.htm).

4. The teacher should point out that the Hong Kong International Airport operates
24 hours a day, but there are too few flights from midnight to 7 a.m. Thus, the
fights in this period are not considered in the investigation.

5. The teacher should remind students that they ought to use the same type of
aircrafts for investigation. The data for passenger flights are used in this
exempler only. Data for cargo flights should not be included.

6. The teacher could ask students to work in pairs if they are not familiar with
searching on the Internet. When working in a pair, one student could search the
data and the other could do the recording. It may help to reduce fatigue as the
web sit contains all the flight data of the day. Pair work could also help to
develop students’ collaborative skills.

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