Applications of functions to curve fitting including, linear, polynomial and exponential and logistic function.
a) Collecting Data
b) Model development
c) Data Analysis
d) project writing: introduction of the topic and conclusion including critique of the results and suggestions to build different models.

Goal: development of a set a modules intended to introduce Data Science in a precalculus course mainly for Health Science.

The educational level, class size, institution type:
Freshman, 20-30, college.

Is it a lab, classroom activity, or a longer project? How much time is needed?:

It is a series of modules presented as class activities followed by a culminating group project for each corresponding module. The time needed depends on the module and might extend into 2-3 weeks period.

What are the technical skills and experience with MATLAB the students need to complete this activity?:

Lower level skills: plotting, curve fitting, prediction, clustering.

Are there other disciplinary skills or concepts that students should have already mastered before encountering this activity?:
Topics chosen will be based on the mathematical content of each section from a typical precalculus course; no other in depth disciplinary skills would be required.

How is this activity situated in the course? How easy (or hard) would it be to adapt the activity for use in other settings?:

the sets of modules (activities) will be used as a companion for each major topic from precalculus excluding any trigonometric topic.

Describe the technical skills and experience with MATLAB the students must have mastered before the beginning of the activity:

Introductory: the students will be required only to do minor changes for any written activity in MATLAB to fit their own data for each module.

This project is at its infancy:
the work will start officially early 2024 summer to develop content.
No more detailed are available for now.

Note: The work will be part of a new bigger grant from NSF.

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This teaching activity was created as a part of the Teaching Computation with MATLAB Workshop held in 2023 at Carleton College.