It's tick time again ... and Lyme disease

With the start of summer and wonderful outdoor activities, it might be good to examine the growth of Lyme disease and to recognize its carrier, the deer tick.

Will this be a record year? Hopefully this math activity will alert your students to the care that should be taken when outdoors.

With Excel graphing or graphing by hand, use our data from the CDC to find the growth of Lyme in your state and engage in hypothesizing why that growth or decline might be occurring. What are your odds of contracting Lyme this year?

Note (2026): The update for this activity is on hold due to COVID-related gaps in 2020-21 and a 2022 reporting rule change for Lyme disease. We'll revisit and update once we have more data to make a meaningful analysis.