Data Handling

This collection of Nuffield Maths resources explores Data Handling. The demand is roughly equivalent to that in Higher Level GCSE and Level 2 Functional Mathematics.

They include slide shows to introduce the topics, student sheets and teacher notes, as well as spreadsheets and other resources.

The teachers' notes start with a short overview of the activity, who and what it is designed for, and lists the necessary resources. The student sheets have background information where needed, and tasks for the students to work and reflect on. Extensions and solutions are included in the teachers' notes.

The collection contains the following resources:

Risky business  Students use official data about accidents to calculate relative frequencies and probabilities of different accidents occurring. Emphasis is given to the reliability both of the data and the conclusions that can be drawn.

Sports injuries  Students consider the difficulties in using real data to answer questions such as ‘Which is the most dangerous sport? Students discuss which types of statistical diagram are most appropriate for displaying the data before setting off to draw them. They may practise drawing statistical diagrams either using Excel or by hand.

Larks and owls  A very open investigation in which students may set their own statistical tasks based on sleep requirements. 

Shorter by helicopter  Students plot graphs of real data to compare the straight-line distances between towns with the distance by road.

Music Festival   Students use weather data to consider which month would be the best to hold an outdoor music festival.
They practise using either a calculator in Statistics mode or a spreadsheet to calculate mean and standard deviation values.

Pay rates for men and women - Excel activity  Students are shown how to draw and format cumulative frequency graphs in Excel.

Currency conversion An introduction to conversion graphs and direct proportionality in the context of currency conversion, reading and plotting graphs and calculating gradients. One question uses a spreadsheet.

Part-time work survey   A statistical investigation into students’ paid employment. Students design questionnaires, find averages and the range, and draw charts and graphs. Data analysis can be on paper or spreadsheets.

Plumber's callout   Students complete data tables, then draw, read and interpret linear graphs where the intercept on the y axis is not zero. Interpretation includes finding where two linear graphs meet. The last part requires a spreadsheet – omit if computers not available. For level 2 the work could be refocused to introduce algebraic graphs.

Five a day   Students collect data and then use statistical methods to analyse the results.

Heart rate   Students are shown how to measure their pulse rate. They then investigate the effect of other things like exercise and relaxation.