|Tool: Investigating the Height of a Stack of Cookies|| |Go
to:||http://academic.pgcc.edu/~ssinex/cookies_stack.xls (opens a
new window)| How do you get started at mathematical modeling?
Here is an easy, quick, and engaging activity and a “just add
data” interactive Excel spreadsheet to accomplish that first
modeling task. The task involves developing a mathematical model
and making predictions by measuring the height of sandwich
cookie stacks for a variety of number of cookies. The
experimental data is then placed into an Excel spreadsheet that
does all the work to produce the model! Discussion of linear
regression and goodness of fit can be done later. This “just add
data” interactive Excel spreadsheet allows for running two
simple simulations to investigate changing the average cookie
thickness and how it influences the slope of the graph; and how
the introduction of the random variation of individual cookie
thickness influences the scatter of the data and value of
r-squared, a measure of goodness of fit.