Observe Notebook
Light Sensor Activities
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Activity 1 – Students investigate how light intensity changes as the distance from a flashlight or phone light is varied.
The pattern is modeled in Desmos through visual comparison of four function types: linear, rational, power, and exponential decay.
Learners use the real measurements to test the model by identifying interpolation points between the data and extrapolation points beyond the data, helping them see how mathematical representations relate to actual sensor readings.
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Image Analysis – Students explore how a digital image can be treated as a dataset by sampling pixel red, green, and blue (RGB) light-intensity values.
Using stratified random sampling, they collect a representative set of pixels, build Desmos histograms for each color channel, and describe the distributions using shape, center, spread, and unusual features.
Learners compute and compare the mean and median of each channel to interpret skewness and connect their statistical conclusions to what they see in the image.