"Amy and Pam"
Enjoy the story! There are three characters at the bottom. The first character(Pedro) will ask you a question about the reading. The second(Hali) will give you a hint to answer the question. The third(Monti) will show you the correct answer.
Pamela and Amy are the two characters of our story.
They are friends.
They go to the same school and they have the same classes together.
They like to play together.
They also like to help each other.
One day, Pamela was doing her homework and she was working very hard. Amy noticed that Pamela looked confused and upset.
Amy asked Pamela:" Hey, Pam, how are you doing with your homework?"
Pamela answered:" I am very confused about what we learned today in our mathematics class and I need help. May you please help me?"
Amy responded and said:" Of course I will help you. You are my friend."
Amy asked Pamela:" Pam, What is confusing you about what we learned in Math today?"
Pamela responded:" I don't understand what was that mean thingy the teacher was talking about"
Amy said:" Oh OK! I see what is confusing you now. Let me help you."
Pamela was happy that her best friend is going to help her.
Amy started and said:" Pam, let's start from the beginning, what does the word "mean" mean?"
Pamela responded:" I think it means average."
Amy smiled and said:" Good job Pam, that's correct. The mean is the average and it is sometimes called the arithmetic mean as well."
Pamela smiled and said:" Thank you Amy, but I still don't know how to calculate the mean."
Amy responded:" Okay! Let me give you an example."
Amy took a deep breath and started:" So Pam, here is an example. What was your scores on the last 3 exams you took?"
Pamela thought for a minute and answered saying:" On my English quiz, I got 8/10. On my science quiz, I got 9/10. On my Math quiz, I got 7/10."
Amy looked at Pamela and said:" If you want to calculate the mean for your test scores you need to follow two steps."
Pamela grabbed her pencil and started to write as Amy continued explaining:" Step one: add all the numbers together. This means, add the three scores you got."
Pamela responded:" 9 + 8 + 7 = 24"
Amy said:" Good Job! Now count how many quiz scores did you add?"
Pamela said:" Three."
So Amy said:" Step two: divide the sum by how many numbers there are. This means divide 24 by how many quizzes you took."
Pamela continued writing as she was listening to Amy.
Then she said:" So this means 24 divided by 3. This is equal to 8."
Amy jumped and said:" Yes, that's correct. Now these are the two steps you need to determine the mean of a group of numbers."
Pamela smiled and said:" Oh that was easy! Let me go back and try my homework again."
Few minutes later, Pamela came running to Amy and said:" I did it! Thank you very much for helping me Amy. I finished my homework and I now understand what the mean is."
Amy smiled and said:" No problem Pam, that's what friends are for. I just finished my homework and studying too. Let's go play a little bit"
The two friends were happy that they finished their homework and they went to play for a while before going to bed.
Sources:
Graphics: http://www.sxc.hu/
Lesson and example: http://www.studyzone.org/mtestprep/
Definitions: http://dictionary.reference.com/