It’s that time of year - the leaves are changing and Paying for College is in the air. This Halloween, explore three bewitching Desmos activities that will make Paying for College a little less scary. 

DESMOS: OLS Regression and College Costs

Students build their conceptual understanding of HOW least-squares regression works using real data.

First Example: Sticker Price vs Net Price

• Students find the line of best fit for a scatterplot comparing the sticker price and net price for 15 colleges
• Using the interactive graph, students visualize how the line of best fit minimizes squared residuals

Second Example: Acceptance Rate and Financial Aid

• Student make a prediction: do colleges with high acceptance rates offer more financial aid?
• Next, students find a line of best fit
• They analyze the r² value and the impact of removing an outlier
• Finally, they explore non-linear regression models
  

DESMOS: Future Value of a Periodic Investment 

If you have extra funds, should you invest or pay down your student debt faster? Students figure out the best decision for Lin - a recent college graduate who has $150 to either make an additional student loan payment or invest. 

Students practice defining variables and plugging them into a financial formula. Then, they use their calculations to justify a recommendation for Lin.

DESMOS: Recursive Formulas: Paying Down Student Loans

Loan repayment is a recursive formula in action! Each month's balance can be calculating using the previous month's balance. 

Students write a recursive formula to model Jada's student loan repayment. Then, they consider the advantages of using technology, like online loan calculators, when dealing with recursive formulas.

We hope you enjoyed these activities! You can find these and more in NGPF’s Desmos Collection!

About the Author

Kathryn Dawson

Kathryn (she/her) is excited to join the NGPF team after 9 years of experience in education as a mentor, tutor, and special education teacher. She is a graduate of Cornell University with a degree in policy analysis and management and has a master's degree in education from Brooklyn College. Kathryn is looking forward to bringing her passion for accessibility and educational justice into curriculum design at NGPF. During her free time, Kathryn loves embarking on cooking projects, walking around her Seattle neighborhood with her dog, or lounging in a hammock with a book.