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Road-kill Data Analysis: Using Spread Sheets to Integrate Math and Science

Chris Moore Richard HuberNew Hanover County Schools UNCW

Abstract: The right online database can be a goldmine for a teacher interested in engaging

students in math and science inquiry. Such databases are especially effective if the data itself are

of high interest to students and if the data can be manipulated using technology you want your

students to learn how to use. This paper describes how to use one such database, along with the

Excel spreadsheet program, to engage students in explorations of road-kill.

What kind of animal gets run over most often along and around the Richmond Virginia

beltway?1 Would a different species win the “most-often-flattened” title if you were to

look at roads a few hundred miles to the West, in the rural mountains of Virginia?2

Squirrels are less active during the winter; does this behavior protect them from highway

carnage during the winter months?3 Do more deer get hit by cars along forest roads or in

residential areas?4 Besides being macabre, and therefore of interests to middle grades

students, what do all of these questions have in common? All of these questions are

examples of “productive questions,” that is, questions that (1) students can generate on

their own and (2) students can answer through the application of science process skills

using the resources available in the classroom (Elstgeest,1985, Authors, 2001a). The

process of inspiring (or tricking) students into framing such questions and then providing

them structured support in answering the questions through scientific research, is widely

recognized as a key element of, if not the heart and soul of, inquiry based science

education. This paper examines one tool for inspiring such questions and supporting

1 Squirrels2 Yes, opposums3 Yes4 Come now, we can’t give you all the answers. As you would say to your students, “What an interesting question; lets see if we can figure out how to answer that based on what we do know.”

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their exploration, the online FORSite road-kill database

http://www.cnr.vt.edu/forsite/roadkill/index.cfm.

We often think in terms of hands-on investigations as the path that students should be

guided towards and along in an inquiry-based science classroom. However, hands-on

manipulation of test tubes and beakers is not the only way scientists work nor should

hands-on chemistry and hands-on M&M data analysis and graphing activities be the only

kind of science students experience. Another equally important and valid approach to

learning through scientific inquiry is student exploration of large databases (Author,

2001b). Authors (2001b) describe how two such databases, Water on the Web

(http://waterontheweb.org/) and River Run (http://www.uncw.edu/riverrun/), can be used

to facilitate student inquiry. Both of these large online databases incorporate powerful

user-friendly “data visualization tools” that can be used to generate graphic displays from

the data. While the FORSite road-kill database does not include the type of sophisticated

data manipulation and visualization tools of these sites, it does offer two educationally

valuable means for students to interact with the data. First, the site has its own

straightforward query engine that can be used to answer productive questions. Second,

the site allows access to the entire database, which is in an Excel compatible format.

Thus, students can copy the entire database (1,028 road-kill entries) into Excel and gain

expertise with Excel as they manipulate the data to answer a wide variety of their own

questions.

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In a review of online resources for promoting inquiry, authors (2001b) point out that one

of the databases they examined, River Run, was especially engaging to students because

the data documented very engaging stories for students to explore, including the impacts

of several hurricanes, hog farm waste spills, sewage spills, and a once-in-five-hundred

year flood. In a similar manner, the FORSite road-kill database readily engages students

for two reasons. First, the topic of road-kill has intrinsic allure. Second, the database is

interesting because it is so well suited to answering interesting questions.

A simple Google search for “road-kill cartoons” evidences the broad appeal enjoyed by

this topic. Note that the types of cartoons that are readily available on the topic of road-

kill can provide not only a resource for stimulating student interest, but a resource for

teaching science and math content as well. For example, the cartoons shown in Figure 1

and Figure 2 can be used to introduce the important concept of “primary” and

“secondary” road-kill—secondary road-kill being animals attracted to the road by the

food source of primary road-kill. The cartoon in Figure 2 has obvious math applications

as well. Another fun resource on road-kill is the tongue-in-cheek, yet useful, field guide

to road-kill by Knutson (1987).

In addition to drawing on an intrinsically engaging topic, the FORSite database can draw

students into explorations because it so readily lends itself to answering interesting

questions. For example, the database contains data from two geographically close but

ecologically contrasting sites—a suburb located in the zone where the Virginia Piedmont

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meets the Coastal Plain as compared to and contrasted with a rural Appalachian mountain

forest. As a result it invites questions about similarities and differences between two

ecological communities. Additionally, because the data can be selected and sorted along

several parameters, a wide variety of questions can be answered by processing the data.

Thus, even if your curriculum does not include the specific regions of Virginia from

which the data are drawn, the database is ideally suited to teaching ecological concepts

and science processes as students explore provocative questions about what animals are

killed the most often and where.

-------------insert Figures 1 and 2 about here---------

The FORSite road-kill database is one of the resources available on the “FORSITE

Forestry Outreach Site” created by the Virginia Tech College of Natural Resources,

Department of Forestry (http://www.cnr.vt.edu/dendro/forsite/contents.htm). The site

presents itself as a resource “. . . for students of all ages, particularly middle school.

Topics include cells, and cellular organization, classification of organisms, populations,

communities, ecosystems and ecosystem dynamics, reproduction, genetics, and

management of renewable resources.” The site also contains resources for Virginia

teachers, interactive lessons, and scientific investigations, which includes the Wildlife

Roadkill study. One option for teachers using this resource is to make arrangements to

have their students collect road-kill data and post it to the site. Two schools, which have

done so already, Midlothian Middle School and Dungannon Middle School in Virginia,

have posted 1,028 entries to the site, creating a rich database for other science classrooms

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to access. Midlothian is located in a well-treed area just inside of the outer beltway of

Richmond, in the Piedmont/Coastal Plain of Virginia. Dungannon is located in a more

sparsely populated and more heavily forested mountain region in western Virginia. For

each observation, students recorded the type and number of animals killed, the name of

the road, the date, the length of the road section, and the primary and secondary land uses

around the road. As shown below, the database can be searched and sorted by any of

these parameters using Excel.

When working with our students, we opted to teach them a relatively simple three stage

process for manipulating the data to answer their own questions. In the first stage,

students learn how to copy the Excel spreadsheet from the internet site and paste it into

Excel. Regardless of how many hypotheses tested, this activity only needs to be done

once. To support students, we kept a copy of the Excel file on a teacher web page for the

students to access in case their files became corrupted. We also posted a link to the

FORSite web site on the teacher web page for the convenience of students. In the second

stage of the process, students work with the entire database, using Excel, to analyze the

data and record relevant findings on paper. We had the students record this data in a

table format in order to teach them how to use tables to organize data and to simplify the

final stage of the process. In the final stage, students enter their tables of data into Excel

to create the spreadsheet that they then can use to answer their questions and generate

graphs. This data entry can involve both straight typing of the data collected in the

second stage of this process or typing and also using Excel formulas to generate

numerical data, depending upon the nature of the questions students pose.

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As an example of this process, consider the question we left unanswered in the first

paragraph of this paper—how do rates of deer road-kill differ depending on the land use

around the road? To address this question, Students would work through the steps below.

Detailed instructions for students on how to complete each of these steps are provided in

Appendix 1.

1. Create an Excel file of the database by copying the database from the online

application and pasting into a blank Excel workbook

2. Sort and prune the file to create a new spreadsheet containing data only on deer.

3. Sort the new “deer” worksheet by “Land use 1.”

4. Collect and record data from the spreadsheet—how many deer are killed in each

different “land use” area.

5. Create a new spreadsheet of the data collected from Step 4.

6. Generate either a bar graph (Figure 3) or a circle graph (Figure 4) using the Excel

graphing feature. We allow our student substantial time and opportunity for open

exploration at this point and only intervene if they are reaching frustration

thresholds (which virtually never happens) or if they are selecting entirely

inappropriate graphical formats, such as a line graph for discrete data (happens

occasionally). Typically, students have little difficulty generating appropriate

graphs.

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-----------------insert Figures 3 and 4 about here--------------

A wide variety of questions can be explored using slight variations on the protocol

outlined above. Variations on how Excel must be used to manipulate the data give

students opportunities to use a variety of Excel features and forces them to use the

program with some level of understanding, rather than by simply following a model. As

we worked with students on exploring topics related to the road-kill data, the discussions

of student hypotheses lent itself to both informal and formal instruction on a variety of

ecological concepts. Follow-up topics included discussions about natural selection,

changes in predator and pray relationships, food webs, habitat fragmentation, and the

impact of man-made and natural barriers to migration.

A number of middle grades mathematics objectives naturally fall into play when working

through explorations of the database as well, including proportional reasoning, measures

of central tendency, generation and interpretation of graphs, and principles of statistics

and probability. For example, are the findings in the deer kill example above the results

of where deer live, where they get killed (e.g., as a result of poorer street lighting in the

forests, perhaps), or merely a sampling error due to where students spent more time

collecting data? Clearly these questions are worthy of exploration in both science and

math classes.

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Numerous other topics can be explored using Excel by accessing other appropriate online

databases. For example, Journey North (http://www.learner.org/jnorth/) provides data on

observations of migrations of many animal species. For the different species listed on the

site, students can click on a “sightings” link to bring up a data management tool that lets

them select data by the type of sighting and the time range of sightings (up to 365 days).

The results of these searches are displayed in a table, which can be copied into Excel for

more detailed sorting (e.g., by dates or locations) and additional manipulation (e.g.,

generating graphs). For integration of social studies, students can access several data

bases of federal government and political data on the Electoral Vote Predictor site

(http://www.electoral-vote.com/). The “data galore” link on this site offers access to

several large databases including Excel-compatible tables on presidential, senate, and

house poling data; current makeup of the Senate and House; Senate and House members’

ties to liberal and conservative groups; and Senate election data from 1914 to 2006.

In conclusion, large online databases, when combined with appropriate data manipulation

tools and data visualization tools, provide excellent tools for teaching integrated

curriculum that includes science process skills, science content, mathematics, and

technology. The FORSite road-kill database has proven to be very effective in

integrating this curriculum around a content area of high interest to middle grades

students.

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Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank Jasper Moore for the original

cartoons used in this paper, which have been used here with permission.

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References:

Authors. (2001a). “A Model for Extending Traditional Hands-on Science Instruction to

be Inquiry Based,” School Science and Math. 100(9). 32-42.

Authors. (2001b) “Internet Tools for Facilitating Scientific Inquiry.” Meridian: A

Middle School Computer Technologies Journal 4(1). Available

http://www.ncsu.edu/meridian/win2001/wint2001toc.html.

Electoral Vote Predictor. July 14, 2008. Available http://www.electoral-vote.com/.

Elstgeest, J. (1985). The right question at the right time. In W. Harlen, (Ed.), Primary

science: Taking the plunge. Oxford: Heinemann Educational.

FORSITE Forestry Outreach Site. July 14, 2008. Virginia Tech College of Natural

Resources, Department of Forestry. Available

(http://www.cnr.vt.edu/dendro/forsite/contents.htm).

Journey North. July 14, 2008. Available http://www.learner.org/jnorth/.

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Knutson, R. M., (1987). Flattened Fauna: A field guide to common animals of roads,

streets, and highways. Berkley: Ten Speed Press.

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Appendix 1: Student instructions for using database to test hypotheses about number of deer killed in different ecosystems.

1) Create an Excel file of the database by copying the database from the online application and pasting into a blank Excel workbook.

a) Go to the FORSite road-kill survey page (http://www.cnr.vt.edu/forsite/roadkill/) and under the heading “Contents of database,: click on “look at all data.” This action will bring up options of how you want the data sorted.

b) Under the heading “Number killed,” click on “display results.” This selection will bring up a summary table followed by the spreadsheet.

c) Place your cursor before the word “School” in the first cell of the spreadsheet and click and drag to highlight the entire spreadsheet. From the “Edit” tab in the pulldown menu, select either “cut” or “copy.”

d) Open a new Excel workbook and from the Edit tab select “paste” to create the new file.

2) Sort and prune the file to create a new spreadsheet containing data only on deer.

a) Place the cursor anywhere in the “species” column and click on the sort button in the standard toolbar.

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b) After the spreadsheet is sorted by species, use click and drag to highlight all of the “deer” rows from the spreadsheet. Copy them, and paste them into a new spreadsheet. (Give this spread sheet the same column headings as the original, either by using cut and paste or retyping the headings)

3) Sort the new “deer” worksheet by “Land use 1.”

4) Collect and record data from the spreadsheet—how many deer are killed in each different “land use” area.

a) Make a table in your math/science notebook to record this data Set up the table with two columns labeled with “land use” and “number of deer kills.” Whenever you have a lot of kills, use the “sum” button from the Standard Excel Toolbar to count for you.

i) Insert a new row in the database after the last row of relevant data.

ii) Place the cursor in the # observed column in this blank row and use click and drag to highlight the relevant data in the column above the blank row (in this example, all the “commercial” rows.

iii) Click on the sum button ( ∑ ) in the standard toolbar. The sum will appear in the blank cell you created.

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5) Create a new spreadsheet of the data you collected from Step 4 by typing your table into Excel.

6) Generate either a bar graph or a circle graph using the Excel graphing feature.

a) Using click and drag, highlight the entire spreadsheet.

b) Click on the “chart wizard” button on the Excel standard toolbar and follow the prompts to create a graph.

“Someone lured him here with a possum. Make no

mistake: this wasn’t roadkill, it was roadmurder.”

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Figure 1: Road Murder

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Figure 2: Road-kill turkey dinner

“I don’t care how hard it is to find, you don’t need to go through all this fuss for a roadkill turkey dinner!”*

*Turkeys represent only 3 out of 1,028 observations or_____% of all road-kill.

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Figure 3 Deer kills by area bar graph.

Number of Deer Kills

01020304050

Type of area

Num

ber o

f kill

s

:

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Figure 4: Deer kills by area circle graph

Number of Deer Kills

CommercialCrop

ForestOld field/brush

PastureResidential