Getting a feel for data

Getting a feel for data

Teacher notes
This task provides suggestions on how to start teaching statistics in a way that allows students to engage in
some guided inquiry and offers opportunities for collaboration and discussion.

Activity 1 requires students to use patterns and logic to get the answer and it requires them to think about
what mean, median and mode represent in a data set.

For activity 2 students should realize that using measures of central tendency alone is not enough to make
inferences about data. Measures of dispersion are also important.

Connection to previous learning

In statistics we study concepts such as quantity, representation and modelling (ask students to think, discuss
and give an example of each).

But how does statistics work in practice? For example:

- If the mean weight of newborn babies is 3.3 kilograms, can we consider a newborn of 2.9 kilograms to
be healthy? What other information would we need?
- Is the average length of a team of basketball players a good indicator of the team’s success?

Essential questions
This task is about getting a feel for data. The first thing a statistician/scientist/economist/researcher does
after collecting data is to try to get a sense or feel for that data. What does it look like? Can we graph it?
What’s the mean? What’s the lowest value? What is the mode? Only after we have a feel for the data we
work with, can we start making inferences and predictions.

What do we need to know about our data and what techniques can we use to successfully interpret the
information it gives us?

Mathematics: analysis and approaches teacher support material 1

 Getting a feel for data

Activity
Mean, median and mode
There are several sets of five positive whole
numbers with the following properties:

Mean = 4

Median = 3

Mode = 3

Ask students whether they can you

find all the different sets of five positive
whole numbers that satisfy these conditions.

Which is which?
The six lists A to F are samples taken from
two sets of data. Students should be asked
to figure out which is which.

One set of data represents weights and the

other set of data represents temperature.
Given that list A represents temperature and
list B represents weights, what do the other
lists represent, temperature or weights?

Reflect and/or
extend
Students can reflect upon the following.

• What can we tell about our data by comparing its mean and median?

• Why do we want to have an indication of dispersion for our data? Isn’t knowing the mean enough?

• If a sample of a very large population with a range of x was taken, what could you say about the range
of that sample?

• If all the values in our set of data were doubled, how would that change the mean and the range?

Mathematics: analysis and approaches teacher support material 2