Describing Distributions

In the past, when I taught describing distributions of quantitative data I would give notes and examples on the different shapes (skewed, symmetric, unimodal, etc).  This year the students were (supposed) to have read about these ideas the night before. When they came to class I handed out these data on AP scores for all exams from 2012, and asked them to find 3 datasets -- one that was skewed right, one skewed left, and one symmetric.  They were much more engaged and talkative, and we were able to have conversations like "what would it mean for exam scores to be right skewed?,"  which we wouldn't have had in the past. We still did some notes right at the end of class, but overall engagement was much higher.