EVERY SCORE MAKES A DIFFERENCE

Use the widget in this lesson to explore how each piece of data can make a difference to the mode, the
median, the mean or the range.

TASK 1 Changing the mode

Enter this data into the widget: 0, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8

1 What is the mode? ________
2 Change one score only to make the mode 3. List your new scores.
3 Change the scores to make the mode 5. List your new scores.
4 Change the scores to make the modes 5 and 6. List your new scores.
5 Change the scores to have no mode. List your new scores.

TASK 2 Changing the median

Enter this data into the widget: 15, 16, 16, 16, 18, 18, 19, 20
1 What is the median? ________
2 Change one score only to make the median 16. List your new scores.
3 Change one score only to make the median 16.5. List your new scores.
4 Change 20 to 55. Does this change the median? Why?

_______________________________________________________________________________

TASK 3 Changing the range

Enter this data into the widget: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80
1 What is the range? ________
2 Change one score only to make the range 60. List your new scores.
3 Change one score only to make the range 80. List your new scores.
4 Which scores affect the range?
TASK 4 Create your own data

Create your own sets of eight scores that fit each condition. Enter your data into the widget to check.
Condition Scores
8 scores with a median of 7
8 scores with a mode of 42
8 scores with a range of 3
8 scores with a mode of 5 and a range of 4
8 scores with a median of 25 and a mode of 22
8 scores with a range of 40 and a median of 15.5
8 scores with a range of 40, a mode of 40 and a median of 40

TASK 5 Comparing means, medians and modes

The mean, the median and the mode are called measures of central tendency because in large sets of
data they often all tend to be in the middle.
However, when you only have a small set of scores, this is not always the case.

Answer these questions by experimenting with your own data in the widget.
1 In a set of eight scores, can you change one of the scores without changing:
a the mode?
b the median?
c the mean?
(If you answer yes, record an example of the data and how you changed it.)

2 Challenge

Create at least two different sets of eight scores with a mean, median and mode of 10 but with
a range not equal to 0.