Here are some specific activities, investigations or visual aids we have picked out. Click anywhere in the grey area to access the resource.
Centre and Variability Make sense of and determine the reasonableness of the mean and median of a data set by looking at the values.
Standard Deviation Find how 'spread out' data is by estimating and calculating this measure of dispersion.
Here are some exam-style questions on this statement:
- "The personal trainer collected data from a randomly selected sample of days. From this he found that the number glasses of water he drank in a day had a mean of 4.35. " ... more
- "The weights in grams of 98 mice are shown in the cumulative frequency diagram. The heaviest mouse weighted 160g." ... more
- "This cumulative frequency graph shows the speeds in kmh-1 of cyclists passing a certain point on a race track." ... more
- "The table below shows the scores for 12 students on two Mathematic exam papers. For the first paper calculators were allowed and for the second paper they were not." ... more
- "A data set has \(n\) items. The sum of the items is 650, the mean is 13 and the standard deviation is 5." ... more
Click on a topic below for suggested lesson Starters, resources and activities from Transum.
- Averages "Average" is a very general term that is used commonly in everyday English and most people have an idea what it means. Mathematicians like to be a little more precise however and have come up with a number of different ways of finding a measure of central tendency. Pupils at school should develop their understanding of averages so that they can more precisely communicate information to others and are not misled by statistics presented in a way to distort the facts. Pupils should understand and use the mean of discrete data. They should be able to compare two simple distributions using the range and one of the mode, median or mean. See also the topics called Data Handling and Statistics.
- Statistics Statistics is the study of the collection, organisation, analysis, interpretation and presentation of data. It deals with all aspects of data, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments. It also includes describing mathematical relationships between variables and presenting these to an audience in a way that best conveys meaning. See also the topics called Data Handling, Probability and Averages.
Furthermore
This Bicen Maths video clip shows everything you need to memorise on Measures of Spread for A Level Maths.
If you use a TI-Nspire GDC there are instructions for calculating statistics from a list which is useful for this topic.
This video on Mean, Standard Deviation and Variance is from Revision Village and is aimed at students taking the IB Maths AA SL/HL level courses.
How do you teach this topic? Do you have any tips or suggestions for other teachers? It is always useful to receive feedback and helps make these free resources even more useful for Maths teachers anywhere in the world. Click here to enter your comments.
