Week 8 331-Impression of Fathom

This week we had another break with our technology and created a Module with Fathom. In this we completed 5 tasks and created a capstone task at the end that showed that we have learned about comparing graphs and summary tables in Fathom. One thing that I really appreciated was the fact I could compare multiple categories to one thing. For example, one activity was kind of like a census, and I could put where the children were from on the horizontal axis, but then multiple other things to compare on the vertical axis to see how many kids from each place got to school a certain way. I could also see how their age was distributed. Another thing I found about Fathom that I liked a lot was how I could copy and paste Excell spreadsheet information into a collection table in Fathom. I feel like when comparing this, I can more easily compare different things in Fathom over Excell. I also liked how you really have an infinite amount of space to place different things. If your collection table was taking up too much room, you could shrink it to such a size that it was just a picture of a box. I really think that Fathom would be useful in the classroom and as a way to analyze some statistical information in a future job setting. In Fathom, students can learn how to interpret information based in tabular form, and create conjectures about its graphical form and its overall nature. Although this has a lot of options, I feel that Fathom is more for understanding graphical relationships and how data can show such things. A lot of times it is like Excell, though a few commands are harder on Fathom. The recursive formula to make in Fathom would be almost impossible to figure out if you did not have it to begin with. In Excell, you can just press = and make an equation based on each cell unit. Anyways, I think that Fathom is a great resourceful tool and hopefully when I teach in the future, more classrooms will have this program for my leisure.
For my capstone activity I learned about the MLB American League salaries for each team during the 2003 season. Some of the conjectures I made, and would still make today are that the Yankees spend the most money out of any team in the American League, well the entire league for that matter, and that the highest paid players by position would have to be the pitchers. After reviewing the data I was right. Fathom is great for understanding data such as this. The funny thing about this data set is that I think I used it with Dr. Jones in Maths 335 for a previous class discussion we had. It may have even been the same year and everything. I don't quite remember but I just thought it was funny. I am also glad that the Fathom module wasn't as time consuming as I had feared. Overall it took me about 4 or 5 hours to complete the entire thing. I did this over two days. About 1 and 1/2 hours the first day and finished it off with about four hours last night. Tonight I focus on my reading and finishing the blog. Class was interesting today as well. I feel the importance of class was to show how module creating might help us in leading an online mathematics course. Modules don't necessarily have to be about technology, but we are doing them on technology for the purpose of this class.