Statistics: Introduction to Statistics: What Is Data?
Recognizing, collecting, and describing data
Statistics: Introduction to Statistics: What Is Data?
Recognizing, collecting, and describing data
Statistics - Grade 6-8
- 1
In your own words, explain what data is. Then give one example of data a teacher might collect in a classroom.
Think about information that can be recorded, counted, measured, or described.
Data is information collected to answer a question or learn about something. A teacher might collect data about students' quiz scores, favorite books, or how many minutes students read each night. - 2
A student asks 20 classmates, "How many pets do you have at home?" Is the information collected data? Explain why or why not.
Yes, the information collected is data because it gives recorded answers from people that can be counted, organized, and used to answer a question. - 3
Classify each item as data or not data: a list of lunch choices, one person's opinion that pizza is best, the heights of students in centimeters, a blank notebook page.
Data must contain information that has been collected or recorded.
A list of lunch choices is data because it records information. One person's opinion that pizza is best can be data if it is recorded as a response. The heights of students in centimeters are data because they are measurements. A blank notebook page is not data because it does not contain recorded information. - 4
The table shows the number of books read by five students: Ana 4, Ben 2, Cora 7, Diego 3, Emma 4. What question could this data help answer?
This data could help answer the question, "How many books did each student read?" It could also help answer, "What is the typical number of books read by this group of students?" - 5
A weather station records the temperature outside every hour for one day. Is this a good example of data collected over time? Explain.
Look for repeated measurements at different times.
Yes, this is a good example of data collected over time because the same measurement, temperature, is recorded at regular times throughout the day. - 6
Decide whether each example is numerical data or categorical data: eye color, number of siblings, shoe size, favorite sport.
Numerical data uses numbers as measurements or counts. Categorical data sorts items into groups.
Eye color is categorical data because it names a group or category. Number of siblings is numerical data because it is a count. Shoe size is numerical data because it uses numbers to describe size. Favorite sport is categorical data because it names a category. - 7
A survey asks students to choose their favorite school subject from math, science, language arts, social studies, or art. What type of data will the survey collect? Explain.
The survey will collect categorical data because each answer is a subject name, which places the response into a category. - 8
A coach records how many laps each runner completes in 10 minutes. What type of data is being collected? Explain what the numbers represent.
Counts and measurements are numerical data.
The coach is collecting numerical data. The numbers represent a count of how many laps each runner completes in the same amount of time. - 9
Look at this data set: 12, 15, 13, 18, 12, 16. What might these numbers represent? Give two possible meanings for the data set.
These numbers might represent the ages of people in a group. They might also represent the number of minutes students spent on homework, the number of points scored in games, or another count or measurement. - 10
A bar graph shows how students travel to school: bus 12, car 8, walk 5, bike 3. What data was collected to make the graph?
Identify the categories and the number in each category.
The data collected was how each student travels to school. The counts show that 12 students take the bus, 8 ride in a car, 5 walk, and 3 ride a bike. - 11
Write one statistical question and one non-statistical question about students in your school. Explain the difference.
A statistical question expects different answers from different people or objects.
A statistical question is, "How many minutes do students in our school spend reading each night?" because the answers will vary. A non-statistical question is, "How many minutes did I read last night?" because it asks for one specific answer. - 12
A student wants to know the most popular fruit in the cafeteria. They ask only their two best friends. Explain why this may not be enough data.
This may not be enough data because two friends may not represent the whole cafeteria. Asking more students from different groups would give a better picture of the most popular fruit. - 13
The dot plot shows the number of hours students spent playing video games on Saturday. What does each dot represent?
In a dot plot, each dot stands for one piece of data.
Each dot represents one student's answer for the number of hours they spent playing video games on Saturday. Dots stacked above the same number show that multiple students gave that answer. - 14
A data set contains the following entries: red, blue, red, green, blue, blue, red. What kind of data is this, and what could it represent?
This is categorical data because the entries are color names, not measurements or counts. It could represent students' favorite colors, colors of cars in a parking lot, or colors of candies in a bag. - 15
Choose the better way to collect data for the question, "How much water do students drink during the school day?" Option A: Guess based on one student. Option B: Ask many students to record the number of water bottles or cups they drink in one day. Explain your choice.
Good data collection should match the question and include enough information.
Option B is the better way to collect data because it records information from many students. This gives a larger and more useful data set than guessing based on one student.