Statistics Lesson: Reducing NYC Food Emissions
Lesson Plan
3 hoursGrades9, 10, 11, 12Mathematics
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Written by Sol Giesso, Julie Santaniello
About this lesson
In this lesson, students investigate and analyze data about how food travels to New York City supermarkets and how much of it is wasted, using statistical tools to characterize and compare climate impacts. Students then choose and justify a climate action strategy for a NYC supermarket, using statistics to guide decision-making.
Inquire: Students discuss feelings around food waste, explore where food comes from, and consider how living in a large city affects food distribution and sustainability.
Investigate: Students take the role of supermarket managers to calculate statistics (mean, weighted average, median, mode, range, interquartile range) from data, create and interpret scatter plots, lines of best fit, box plots, and histograms, and compare the environmental costs of different food items.
Inspire: Students calculate and synthesize statistical findings to choose and justify a climate action strategy for the supermarket that reduces greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and/or food waste while preserving customer loyalty and profits.
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Everything you need to teach it
- Teacher SlideshowOpen
- Student DocumentOpen
- Teacher Document Answer KeyOpen
- Teacher Spreadsheet Answer KeyOpen
- South Bronx Grocer Procurement Data SpreadsheetOpen
- South Bronx Grocer Food Waste Data SpreadsheetOpen
- South Bronx Grocer Strategy Comparison SpreadsheetOpen
Teaching tips
Suggestions
- This lesson is designed to be completed over two or three days:
- Two days: Day 1, Inquire and Investigate; Day 2, Inspire.
- Three days: Day 1, Inquire and Investigate through transportation emissions; Day 2, finish Investigate and start Inspire; Day 3, finish Inspire.
- This lesson is designed as a culminating lesson for a statistics unit, bringing together summary statistics, data visualization, and statistical reasoning in an applied context.
- This lesson can be taught at multiple points in a high school statistics sequence.
- The Investigate section (summary statistics, box plots, histograms, and scatter plots) is appropriate for an Algebra I or Introductory Statistics course.
- The Inspire section requires higher-order thinking and may be better suited to Algebra I Honors, Algebra II, or Statistics courses.
- Algebra I teachers may choose to assign one strategy in the Inspire section rather than all three or to complete a shortened strategy comparison with more scaffolds and guidance.
- This lesson highlights local connections to New York City through the South Bronx Grocer context and Hunts Point Distribution Center. If teaching outside of New York City, consider replacing or adapting the procurement and waste data and adjusting the community context accordingly.
- This lesson provides an authentic context for developing spreadsheet literacy, giving students hands-on experience with the kind of data analysis tools used by professionals.
- This lesson empowers students to use statistical thinking to inform real-world decision-making, demonstrating how data literacy can help businesses, communities, and policymakers weigh trade-offs among environmental sustainability, economic cost, and social equity.
Prerequisites
- Students need access to Google Sheets and a computer or tablet to view and edit spreadsheets. They may share devices in pairs.
- Students should have prior exposure to mean, median, and measures of spread before beginning, as the lesson moves quickly through these concepts and focuses on application and interpretation rather than initial instruction. It is not recommended as an introduction to the statistical concepts it covers.
- This lesson relies on many mathematical skills beyond statistics, including arithmetic, proportional reasoning, unit conversion, rates, and ceiling logic. Students should be comfortable using these skills to aid their statistical analysis.
- Students should be familiar with concepts relating to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.
- Teachers should preview all three spreadsheets before the lesson and adapt them with more guidance as needed.
- Teachers should review the answer keys and work through a few of the strategies’ scenarios to anticipate expected values and student misunderstandings or errors.
Differentiation
- To practice calculating statistical measures, consider requiring them to do so by hand or with a calculator in the Investigate section.
- The fourth question for each strategy (about the effect of the strategy on customers) may be answered as a whole-class discussion rather than in writing.
- To save time, pre-build the scatter plot and histogram and ask students to interpret rather than construct them.
- To shorten the lesson, students can be divided into groups of three for the Inspire section, with each student tackling a different strategy simultaneously.
- The strategies may be assigned based on student level and comfort with the content. Strategy B is the most accessible, while Strategy C is the most demanding.
- To shorten the Inspire section, skip the first question of each strategy and provide students with the qualifying/chosen products directly instead of letting them decide. Teachers who choose to skip the first questions should adapt the South Bronx Grocer Strategy Comparison spreadsheet accordingly.
- To reduce the required calculations, pre-fill some rows of each spreadsheet, leaving two or three rows for students to complete.
- Challenge advanced students to consider whether the cost-per-kg-CO₂ metric is the best way to compare strategies and what alternative metrics might reveal.
- To extend this lesson, ask students to consider what a fourth strategy might look like and sketch out what data they would need to evaluate it.
- This can be done during the discussion in the Inspire section, where students are asked to consider what the best strategy would be for their local grocery store.
- To connect students to real-world applications and careers, consider inviting a local grocery store owner or manager to speak about their efforts towards sustainability.
- Encourage student action by helping them reach out to key stakeholders—local grocery stores, Hunts Point administrators, transportation companies, and others—to learn what steps they are already taking to reduce their carbon footprint and to share ideas for additional strategies they could adopt.
From the scientist review
This lesson tasks students with using statistics to inform a Bronx grocer on how to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions from food transportation and waste. Sources are appropriately cited throughout, with many references to trusted scientific institutions. Students are tasked with using summary statistics to help mitigate climate change while understanding cost concerns. This lesson is recommended for teaching.
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About the teacher writers
Sol Giesso
Content Writer
Sol Giesso, Ed.M., is SubjectToClimate's Content Writer and a middle school math teacher in Boston. She holds an M.S. in Community Climate Adaptation from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and an Ed.M. in Teaching and Teacher Leadership from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and previously worked at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center leading hands-on outdoor education field trips for K–12 students. Fun fact: she loves to draw, scuba dive, and turn any recipe into a vegetarian one.
Julie Santaniello
Middle School Math
Julie is a NYC middle school math teacher and librarian with forty years of experience teaching grades 6-12 in public and private schools. Currently, she is a Math for America Master Teacher Fellow and enjoys engaging students with "mathistry," incorporating color and art into learning math by visualizing patterns. Collaborating with colleagues to create welcoming, equitable learning spaces is her passion, and Julie is always seeking ways to empower students to see themselves as true mathematicians. When not in the classroom, Julie enjoys crafting using materials she finds on her travels.
