Brianna Willis #615 Pre-Algebra 7, per.

7 Anthropometry Project Have you ever heard of Diane France, the Bone Detective? She practiced anthropometry, the measurement of human dimensions. Anthropos means human and metrikos means measuring. That is where the word anthropometry came from! The overall plan was to use our bones in formula to calculate height. The people who were involved in this project were the 15 students and 6 teachers. I am in Pre-Algebra so I did not actually do this project, but my partner JeAnna did. The one thing that Mrs. Schwarz wanted us to learn was that math works with many things in life, even bones! To begin with, on day one and day two, the 6th grade math studied the radius. On day one, the 6th grade math class measured the radius of their arms, and JeAnna measured mine. We took a ruler and held it from the indentation of our wrist to the inside of our elbow. My radius is about 9 inches. In addition, she measured how tall she is to the nearest half inch; I know I am about 62.5 inches. The result that compared my actual height to my estimated height was extremely close! My estimated height was 64 inches! After she got our radius and height, the class found the mean (the average) was 8.3, median (the middle) was 8.5, mode (the most common) was 8.5, and range (the maximum minus the minimum) was 2. On day 2, her class got all of the information that they had gathered on day one and put it on to a scatter graph. The royal purple dots were for the girls and neon blue dots were for boys. The x-axis was the radius and went up to 18 inches. The y-axis was height and went up to 80 inches. Once all of the dots were on the graph, we put a straight line in the middle of all of it, and that was about the average estimate. To use the line to find height from the radius measurement you find the radius and go across on the x-axis to where the line is and go left and see what the height is! I found everything from day one and two extremely interesting. Next, on day three and four, she started studying the tibia and

humerus bones as well as still studying the radius. On day three, she measured her tibia and humerus. You do the humerus by taking a ruler and finding the edge of your radius and measuring up to your shoulder. The tibia you take a ruler (or yardstick) against your ankle up to the middle of your knee. My humerus was about 10 inches and my tibia was about 13 inches. The class used them to find their height, as they did the radius. My predicted heights were 56.6 (humerus) and 61.1 (tibia). The formulas for finding height for all three bones are on the chart. The humerus works best for me. On day four, the class got Mrs. Schwarz, Mrs. Kennedy, Mrs. DeVries, Mr. Gehrer, Mr. Finan, and Mr. Phoxs tibias, humeri, radiuses, and heights. Then, they used the formulas from the chart from day three. After that, they wrote down the difference between the estimated heights and actual heights to find out which formula was the best. The teachers heights were usually within two inches of their actual height. Everything was interesting and fun! In conclusion, the one thing that Mrs. Schwarz wanted us to learn was that math works with many things in life, even bones! I had one difficulty, because I did not actually do this project in math, I had some trouble understand what the measuring was. That was soon cleared up because when we started because it was easy to understand. The thing that I enjoyed most about this project was working with one of my best friends to get the notes to write this paper. My advice to a scientist or archeologist about predicting heights from bone lengths would be that some bones are better than others are, and I found that radius works best for me.