Collecting and

Chapter 3 organising data

Key terms Prior knowledge assumptions
• quantitative data • Students can select and justify a suitable
• qualitative data data collection method.
• biased • Students can select and justify a suitable
data sampling method.
• bias
• Students know that inequality symbols can be
• data collection sheet
used to define intervals for continuous data.

Chapter overview
Section Links Objectives covered Thinking and working
mathematically activities

3.0 Getting started Student’s Book Discussing the advantages

pp. 25–26 and disadvantages of
getting a sample in a
particular scenario.

3.1 Data collection Student’s Book 9Ss.01 Select, trial and Designing a method
pp. 26–29 justify data collection and to collect deliberately
Workbook pp. 14–17 sampling methods to misleading information.
investigate predictions for
a set of related statistical
questions, considering
what data to collect, and
the appropriateness of
each type (qualitative or
quantitative; categorical,
discrete or continuous).
9Ss.02 Explain potential
issues and sources of
bias with data collection
and sampling methods,
identifying further
questions to ask.

3.2 Frequency tables Student’s Book 9Ss.03 Record, organise Creating true and false
and Venn diagrams pp. 29–35 and represent conclusions from a
Workbook pp. 17–22 categorical, discrete and Venn diagram.
continuous data. Choose
and explain which
representation to use
in a given situation:
– Venn and Carroll
diagrams
– tally charts, frequency
tables and two-way
tables.

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Consolidation Student’s Book

exercise pp. 36–37

End of chapter Student’s Book p. 38

reflection

Topic review End of chapter

Ideas for lesson starters

Starting point check: Planning a school investigation
When to use: Section 3.1
Purpose: To plan a statistical investigation
Organisation: Students work in small groups
Task: Ask students to plan an investigation related to internet use or mobile phone use among students in
their school.
Students should think about questions such as:
• What do you want to find out?
• Who will you ask? (Just one class, a year group or the whole school?)
• What questions will you ask?
• What data collection method will you use? (face-to-face interviews, questionnaires on paper or an
online survey?)
• Will you group the data into classes? What class intervals will you use?
Extension: Students could actually collect and analyse the information.

Mental maths
When to use: Section 3.2
Purpose: To develop mental maths strategies relevant to the topic
Task: Read out questions from one of these sets.
Set A Set B

1. There are 8200 people watching a 1. A factory produces 46 metres of fabric.

concert. Geoff wants to give out Pria wants to check the quality of 5% of
questionnaires to 20% of the people. the fabric. Find the length of fabric that
How many questionnaires is that? Pria should check.

2. Yukti asks 600 people whether they
exercised regularly. 480 said they did.
Find the fraction of people who
exercised regularly. Simplify your
answer.
2. Tanvir records the speeds of 240 cars.
84 cars were driving faster than the speed
limit. Find the fraction of cars that were
driving faster than the speed limit. Simplify
your answer.

3. Maggie records the temperature of a hot 3. Ollie is in a band. He records the number
drink every minute. Is this discrete or of people who attend each of the band’s
continuous data? concerts. Is this discrete or continuous
data?

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4. The Venn diagram shows information 4. The Venn diagram shows information
about coats designed by Tina. about houses in a road.

Find the number of red coats Tina Find the number of houses that do not
designed. have a white door.

5. Felix collects a sample of insects. The 5. Toby collects a sample of butterflies.

shortest insect has length 26 mm and The masses range from 0.38 grams to
the longest has length 114 mm. Find the 0.97 grams. Find the range of the masses.
difference between these lengths.

6. Samira records the heights of students
(in centimetres) in a frequency table. One
of her class intervals is 130 ≤ < 135.
Write down the value of a height that
could be recorded in this class interval.
6. Pippa records the times (in seconds)
that athletes take to run a race. One of the
class intervals in her frequency table is
10.0 ≤ < 10.1. Write down a time that
could be recorded in this class interval.

Adaptation: The questions could be put on the board instead of being read out.

Venn diagrams
When to use: Section 3.2
Purpose: To consolidate understanding of Venn diagrams
Organisation: Individual work
Task:

Ask students to complete the Venn diagram to show this information.

• There are 7 values in both A and B.
• There are 11 values in B.
• There are 6 values that are not in A and not in B.
• There 30 values altogether.

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Then ask students to complete the Venn diagram to show the following information.
• There are 20 values in A.
• There are 26 values in B.
• There are 10 values that are not in A and not in B.
• There are 45 values altogether.

Section 3.0: Getting started Student’s Book pp. 25–26

When to use: As a starter activity at the start of this topic

Purpose: To discuss the advantages and disadvantages of methods of getting a sample in a particular
scenario
Organisation: Whole-class discussion
Use in the classroom:
• Remind students what it means to get a sample. Then think about how Erica could get a sample of
leaves and the challenges she would face. (For example, it would be almost impossible to determine
the number of leaves on a tree so a random sample would be impossible to obtain.)
• Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the different methods. For example, discuss why just
choosing leaves on the lower branches might not give the best sample. (One possible sampling
method would be to choose a random sample of the branches and then choose leaves from those
selected branches.)
Assessing thinking and working mathematically:
Students are conjecturing (TWM.03) when they make suggestions for how a sample could be obtained.
They are critiquing (TWM.07) and improving (TWM.08) when they discuss the advantages and
disadvantages of the methods.

Section 3.1: Data collection Student’s Book pp. 26–29

Misconceptions Probing questions

• Confusing the terms qualitative and
quantitative.
• Thinking that you can reduce the
problems associated with using an
unrepresentative sample simply by
increasing the sample size.
• Think of some qualitative variables and
some quantitative variables linked to a
particular scenario (for example, sports).
• Coryn wants to find out what type of food
people prefer eating. Why might collecting
data from people at a Chinese restaurant
give her misleading data?

Support
• Give students plenty of opportunities to
identify sources of bias in data sampling
and data collection methods.
Extension
• Students could design several data
collection methods to gather data suitable
for testing a hypothesis (such as ‘the most
popular subject at school is art’). Discuss
the advantages and disadvantages of the
methods.

Thinking and working mathematically activity page 29

When to use: Within a lesson on data collection and sampling
Purpose: To reinforce understanding that sources of bias may be intentional

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Organisation: Small group followed by whole-class discussion

Use in the classroom:
• Ask students why the pizza restaurant may want to get biased information that would appear to
show customers love its pizzas. In their groups, students should come up with a way that the pizza
restaurant could obtain this biased information. Ask students to give reasons why their method is likely
to give biased information.
• Ask the groups to propose a method that could be used to obtain unbiased information.
• Bring the groups together and discuss the suggestions as a whole class.
Assessing thinking and working mathematically:
Students are critiquing (TWM.07) and convincing (TWM.04) when they explain why their proposed data
collection method will give misleading information. They are improving (TWM.08) when they suggest an
alternative method that would give unbiased information.

Section 3.2: Frequency tables and Venn diagrams Student’s Book pp. 29–35

Misconceptions Probing questions

• When drawing a Venn diagram for three
sets, not having a region where all three
circles overlap.
• Misinterpreting a Venn diagram with three
sets (A, B, C). For example, when finding
the number of people in set A and set B,
forgetting to include the people in all
three sets.
• Having gaps or overlaps when grouping
data.
• When putting information in a frequency
table, what would be a sensible number
of class intervals to use?
• Why would it not be sensible to have
20 class intervals? Or just two class
intervals?

Support
• Recap Venn diagrams with two sets
before doing the work on three sets.
Produce a Venn diagram on the
classroom floor. Use string to form three
large overlapping circles. Ask students to
move themselves to stand in the section
of the Venn diagram appropriate to them.
Extension
• Students could try to solve more complex
word problems involving Venn diagrams,
such as outlined in the additional thinking
and working mathematically activity below.

Thinking and working mathematically activity page 35

When to use: Within a lesson covering Venn diagrams
Purpose: To develop skills at interpreting a Venn diagram by creating true and false statements
Organisation: Individual work
Use in the classroom:
• Ask students to follow the instructions in the Student’s Book to create some statements to accompany
the Venn diagram. They should aim for roughly the same number of true and false statements.
• When students swap their statements with a partner, ask students to correct any statements they
believe to be false.

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Extension: The final part of this activity, as mentioned in the Student’s Book, can be used as an
extension activity. If a student produces a good set of statements, these could be shared with the whole
class. Other students could race against each other to see who can first complete a Venn diagram to
match these statements.
Assessing thinking and working mathematically:
Students are classifying (TWM.06) when they sort their partner’s statements into groups according to
whether the statements are true or false. In the extension activity, students are conjecturing (TWM.03)
if they take a set of statements and try to create a matching Venn diagram.

Additional thinking and working mathematically activity

When to use: After students have explored the problem outlined in the above technology idea.
Purpose: To solve a Venn diagram problem involving three sets.
Organisation: Individual or pair work.
Resources: Photocopiable resource 3A (optional).
Use in the classroom:
Set the following problem to students.
A group of people are asked whether they took part in any of the following types of exercise last week:
walking, cycling or running.
Use the statements to find how many people did not take part in any of these types of exercise.
Statement 1: There were 120 people altogether.
Statement 2: 19 people did walking and cycling, 15 people did cycling and running, and 17 people did
walking and running.
Statement 3: 18 people did exactly two of the activities.
Statement 4: 60 people did walking, 36 people did cycling and 35 people did running.

Tip: If necessary, tell students to begin with statements 2 and 3 to find the number of people who did all
three activities.

Ask students to create a similar problem for a partner to solve.

Assessing thinking and working mathematically:
Students are conjecturing (TWM.03) when they develop ideas for solving the problem. Students are
improving (TWM.08) if they refine their approach (for example, if they are engaged in a trial and
improvement style approach or if they decide to switch from guessing to using an algebraic method).

Consolidation exercise Student’s Book pp. 36–37

The Consolidation exercise on pages 36–37 of the Student’s Book provides additional questions linked to
the content of this chapter. These questions could be used in class or for homework.

Topic review End of chapter

You may also wish to use the Chapter 3 Topic review (end of chapter) to provide formative assessment of
the topic. This resource could be used in class or for homework. Alternatively, it could be used as a more
formal test.

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Chapter 3 Collecting and organising data

Chapter 3 Collecting and organising data: Topic review

1) Luigi is investigating how frequently people in his town cycle.

He decides to interview a sample of cyclists using a cycle path one day.

Explain why the data that Luigi collects may be biased.

…………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………… [1]

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2) Tim records the length of the movies that he has in his digital movie collection.

He shows his results in this frequency table.

Length, (minutes) Tally Frequency

80 ≤ L < 100 |||| 5

100 ≤ L < 120 |||| |||| |||| |||| 19

120 ≤ L < 140

a) Explain why Tim’s class intervals are not well chosen.

…………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………… [1]

The actual length (in minutes) of Tim’s movies are

108 110 114 94 106 115 109 91

105 101 117 119 114 108 107 94
113 107 106 119 92 98 103 118

b) Design and complete a better frequency table to summarise Tim’s data.

All class intervals should have the same width.
You may not need to use all the rows in your frequency table.

Length, (minutes) Tally Frequency

[3]

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3) Yelena asks 40 people whether they like apples, bananas and mangoes.
7 people liked all three fruits.
12 people liked apples and bananas.
9 people liked bananas and mangoes.
1 person liked apples and mangoes but did not like bananas.
20 people liked bananas.
4 people liked none of the fruits.
3 people liked only mangoes.

a) Use the information to complete the Venn diagram.

[3]

b) Find the fraction of the 40 people who liked apples. Give your fraction in its
simplest form.

…………… [2]

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4) A teacher wants to know whether the handwriting of girls is larger than the
handwriting of boys.
She decides to collect data in one of these two ways:
Method 1: Ask students to write a story and count the number of words they use on
the first page.
Method 2: Ask students to write out the same sentence and measure how long their
sentence is.

a) Tick ( ) to show if each of these variables is qualitative or quantitative data.

Qualitative Quantitative
Gender of student
Number of words on first page
Length of sentence (in cm)

[1]

b) Tick the method that will give the teacher the most reliable data.

Method 1 Method 2

Give a reason for your answer.

………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………
[1]

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Chapter 3 Collecting and organising data: Topic review mark scheme

Question Answer Mark Part marks

1 TWM A correct explanation, for example: 1

• He is only asking people who are currently
cycling.
• He should also ask people who don’t cycle.
• The people he asks are more likely to be
keen cyclists.

2(a) TWM A correct explanation, for example: 1

• His table only has two class intervals that
contain any data.
• He doesn’t have enough rows in the table.

2(b) TWM A table with equal class widths, correctly filled in. 3 Award 1 mark for a table with at
The class intervals should cover the data and least three class intervals of equal
have width of no more than 10 minutes. width (width no more than 10
For example: minutes). Condone class intervals
not covering all the data values.
Length, L
Tally Frequency AND
(minutes)
90 ≤ L < 95 |||| 4 Award 1 mark for attempting to
complete their frequency table
95 ≤ L < 100 | 1 (class width no more than 10
100 ≤ L < 105 || 2 minutes). Their frequency table
105 ≤ L < 110 |||| ||| 8 should cover the whole range of
data and class intervals should
110 ≤ L < 115 |||| 4
not overlap. No more than two
115 ≤ L < 120 |||| 5 incorrectly completed rows in their
table.

3(a) Fully correct Venn diagram. 3 Award 2 marks for a Venn

diagram with at least five numbers
filled in correctly.
OR
Award 1 mark for a Venn diagram
with at least three numbers filled
in correctly.

3(b) 2 FT Allow follow through from their

Venn diagram provided that their
fraction can be simplified.
Award 1 mark for their
(12 + 5 + 1 + 7) or their 25.

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Question Answer Mark Part marks

4(a) TWM 1 All boxes correctly ticked.

4(b) TWM Chooses Method 2 with a correct reason, for 1

example:
• Some students may use lots of short words
meaning they will have more words on a
page.
• (With Method 1) Some students may use
different sizes of paper.
• (With Method 2) All students write the same
sentence so it is only handwriting size that
will affect the length.

TOTAL = 12 marks

Suggested formative assessment guidelines

A mark of less than 4 The student is working towards an understanding of the objectives.

A mark of between 4 and 7 The student shows a basic understanding of the objectives.

A mark of between 8 and 10 The student shows a good understanding of the objectives.

A mark of 11 or more The student has an excellent understanding of the objectives and can
apply their understanding to solve problems.

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Photocopiable resource 3A: Template for three-set Venn diagrams

 …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

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