Normals · standard deviations · percentiles · return periods
Not Normal in the classroom
One screen that turns a baseline, a standard deviation and a return period into something a student can move with their hand.
What students do
- Move the baseline. Switch the whole planet from 1951–1980 to 1991–2020, or to the thirty years from the year they were born, and explain why the colours change when the data does not.
- Call it. A chart appears with the place hidden; the student estimates how unusual the final value is, then sees the percentile and return interval. Z-score intuition, practised.
- Read a record. Compare a documented real-world record with the modelled series for the same place, and say what can and cannot be concluded from each.
Classroom licence
Classroom licences are not on sale yet. The field is free to use in a lesson today, with no account.
Why a modelled dataset works in a lesson
Every series is generated from a fixed seed, so every student sees exactly the same numbers and an answer key is possible. The data is labelled as modelled on every screen — and telling a model from a measurement is itself part of the lesson.
It fits naturally alongside statistics units on the normal distribution and z-scores, and Earth-science units that analyse climate data and rates of change.
Background reading
The four guides — climate normals, sigma, return periods, shifting baselines.