I had a pretty great experience with my Grade 12's today using these made-up data sets to discuss with kids how to find multiple modeling functions and then how to narrow them down to one using either asymptotic behavior or the meaning of that type of function. I used it in conjunction with the function types handout that I had given them before, and they were able to ask me some good questions about the differences between functions and how do you know which one is the most appropriate, when a few look very similar?
Even though I wish that they could have come up with the handout information themselves about various function types, it was very valuable to hear them ask those relevant questions, and some of them (the ones who had brought laptops from home) were able to play around with plotting points, setting up sliders for parameter values, and then estimating best fit equations all in GeoGebra. Pretty great, for one day! (The rest of the kids plotted points in their graphing calcs and practiced looking through the functions to find possibilities.)
In the end, I passed out our official IB task and they looked over it and nobody panicked. I think that is a good sign.
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