Unit 8, Lesson 1
Representing Data
Accelerated 6
Preparation
Lesson Narrative
In this lesson, students use dot plots (similar to line plots in earlier grades) as a way to represent data and make sense of what data points mean in context (MP2). Students analyze questions and the kinds of responses they can expect from those questions.
They learn about categorical and numerical data then determine whether a particular survey question will produce one type of data or the other. They begin to recognize variability in data and learn about statistical questions and how they differ from non-statistical questions.
Then students represent distributions of numerical data with dot plots after organizing them into frequency tables. Using graphical representations of distributions, they continue to develop a spatial understanding of distributions in preparation for understanding the concepts of center and spread in future lessons. Students make use of the structure of dot plots to describe distributions and to draw conclusions about the data (MP7).
- Comprehend that the word “frequency” refers to the number of times that a particular value occurs in a data set.
- Create and interpret a dot plot to answer statistical questions about a numerical data set.
- Interpret various representations of data sets and determine whether it is reasonable that a verbal description represents a given numerical data set.
Let's explore different kinds of data.
Required Materials
Activity 3
Required Preparation
None
A set of categorical data has values that are words instead of numbers.
For example, Han asks 5 friends to each name their favorite color. Their answers are “blue,” “blue,” “green,” “blue,” and “orange.”
The distribution of a data set tells how many times each value occurs.
- In the data set blue, blue, green, blue, orange, the distribution is 3 blues, 1 green, and 1 orange.
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This dot plot shows the distribution for the data set 6, 10, 7, 35, 7, 36, 32, 10, 7, 35 kilograms.
A dot plot is a way to represent data with dots. Each dot above a number shows one time the value occurs in the set.
The frequency of a data value is how many times it occurs in the data set.
For example, there are 20 dogs in a park. The table shows the frequency of each color.
| dog color | frequency |
|---|---|
| white | 4 |
| brown | 7 |
| black | 3 |
| multi-color | 6 |