Introduction
If you ask your classmates about their favourite colours, you will get a list of colours. This list is an example of data. Similarly, if you measure the weight of each student in your class, you would get a collection of measures of weight—again data.
Any collection of facts, numbers, measures, observations or other descriptions of things that convey information about those things is called data.
We live in an age of information. We constantly see large amounts of data presented to us in new and interesting ways. In this chapter, we will explore some of the ways that data is presented, and how we can use some of those ways to correctly display, interpret and make inferences from such data!
Let's see with an example?
Navya and Naresh are discussing their favourite games.
Navya : Cricket is my favourite game!
Naresh : I play cricket sometimes but hockey is the game I like the most.
Navya : I think cricket is the most popular game in our class.
Naresh : I am not sure. How can we find the most popular game in our class?
Other : To figure out the most popular game in their class, what should Navya and Naresh do? Can you help them?
Let's start with an activity?
Naresh and Navya decided to go to each student in the class and ask what their favourite game is. Then they prepared a list.
Navya is showing the list:
| Mehnoor – Kabaddi | Pushkal – Satoliya (Pittu) | Anaya – Kabaddi |
|---|---|---|
| Jubimon – Hockey | Densy – Badminton | Jivisha – Satoliya (Pittu) |
| Simran – Kabaddi | Jivika – Satoliya (Pittu) | Rajesh – Football |
| Nand – Satoliya (Pittu) | Leela – Hockey | Thara – Football |
| Ankita – Kabaddi | Afshan – Hockey | Soumya – Cricket |
| Imon – Hockey | Keerat – Cricket | Navjot – Hockey |
| Yuvraj – Cricket | Gurpreet – Hockey | Hemal – Satoliya (Pittu) |
| Rehana – Hockey | Arsh – Kabaddi | Debabrata – Football |
| Aarna – Badminton | Bhavya – Cricket | Ananya – Hockey |
| Kompal – Football | Sarah – Kabaddi | Hardik – Cricket |
| Tahira – Cricket |
She says (happily), “I have collected the data. I can figure out the most popular game now!”.
A few other children are looking at the list and wondering, “We can’t yet see the most popular game. How can we get it from this list?”.
Step 1: Categorizing the Games
Kabaddi: Mehnoor, Anaya, Simran, Ankita, Arsh, Sarah →
Satoliya (Pittu): Pushkal, Jivisha, Jivika, Nand, Hemal →
Hockey: Jubimon, Leela, Afshan, Imon, Navjot, Gurpreet, Rehana, Ananya →
Badminton: Densy, Aarna →
Football: Rajesh, Thara, Debabrata, Kompal →
Cricket: Soumya, Keerat, Yuvraj, Bhavya, Hardik, Tahira →
Step 2: Finding the Most popular Game
1. What would you do to find the most popular game among Naresh’s and Navya’s classmates?
By organizing the data collected, using
2. What is the most popular game in their class?
3. Try to find out the most popular game among your classmates.
4. Pari wants to respond to the questions given below. Put as (Yes) for the questions where she needs to carry out data collection and put as (No) for the questions where she doesn’t need to collect data. Discuss your answers in the classroom.
Shri Nilesh is a teacher. He decided to bring sweets to the class to celebrate the new year. The sweets shop nearby has jalebi, gulab jamun, gujiya, barfi, and rasgulla. He wanted to know the choices of the children. He wrote the names of the sweets on the board and asked each child to tell him their preference. He put a tally mark ‘|’ for each student and when the count reached 5, he put a line through the previous four and marked it as ||||.
| Sweets | Tally Marks | No.of students |
|---|---|---|
| Jalebi |   | 6 |
| Gulab jamun |  | 9 |
| Gujiya |  | |
| Barfi | | |
| Rasgulla |  |
1. Complete the table to help Shri Nilesh to purchase the correct numbers of sweets:
Shri Nilesh requested one of the staff members to bring the sweets as given in the table. The above table helped him to purchase the correct numbers of sweets.
2. Is the above table sufficient to distribute each type of sweet to the correct student? Explain. If it is not sufficient, what is the alternative?
Solution:
It is not sufficient.
Shri Nilesh should have also written children’s names against each sweet item. Only then he could have given the right sweet to the right child.
To organise the data, we can write the name of each sweet in one column and using tally signs, note the number of students who prefer that sweet. The numbers 6, 9, … are the frequencies of the sweet preferences for jalebi, gulab jamun … respectively.
Sushri Sandhya asked her students about the sizes of the shoes they wear. She noted the data on the board.
4 5 3 4 3 4 5 5 4
5 5 4 5 6 4 3 5 6
4 6 4 5 7 5 6 4 5
She then arranged the shoe sizes of the students in ascending order —
1. Help her to figure out the following:
| Shoe Size | Tally Marks | No.of Students |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | | |
| 4 | | |
| 5 | | |
| 6 | | |
| 7 | |
a. The largest shoe size in the class is
b. The smallest shoe size in the class is
c. There are
d. There are
2. How did arranging the data in ascending order help to answer these questions?
Solution:
Let’s arrange the data in ascending order:
It takes a bit more time to answer as compared to the
3. Are there other ways to arrange the data?
The data can also be arranged in descending order
4. Write the names of a few trees you see around you. When you observe a tree on the way from your home to school (or while walking from one place to another place), record the data and fill in the following table.
| Tree | No.of Trees |
|---|---|
| Peepal | 5 |
| Neem | 2 |
| Mango | 3 |
| Banyan | 1 |
5. Take a blank piece of paper and paste any small news item from a newspaper. Each student may use a different article. Now, prepare a table on the piece of paper as given below. Count the number of each of the letters ‘c’, ‘e’, ‘i’, ‘r’, and ‘x’ in the words of the news article, and fill in the table.
| Letter | c | e | i | r | x | Any other letter of your choice |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of times found in the news item | 8 | 15 | 10 | 9 | 3 | 2 |
a. The letter found the most number of times is
b. The letter found the least number of times is
c. List the five letters ‘c’, ‘e’, ‘i’, ‘r’, ‘x’ in ascending order of frequency. Now, compare the order of your list with that of your classmates. Is your order the same or nearly the same as theirs? (Almost everyone is likely to get the order ‘x, c, r, i, e’.) Why do you think this is the case?
x (3), c (8), r (9), i (10), e (15)
Provide more opportunities to collect and organise data. Ask students to guess what is the most popular colour, game, toy, school subject, etc., amongst the students in their classroom and then collect the data for it. It can be a fun activity in which they also learn about their classmates.
Discuss how they can organise the data in different ways, each way having its own advantages and limitations. For all these tasks and the tasks under ‘Figure it Out’, discuss the tasks with the children and let them understand the tasks, and then let them plan and present their research processes and conclusions in the class.