Five pages on the kinds of data and how a sample is chosen. Page 1 sorts eight survey questions and four data sets into category data and number data. Page 2 gives six situations: students circle the kind of data, then the graph that fits it best from three small pictures. Page 3 has four surveys: students name the population, circle fair or biased and write why. Page 4 sorts eight things into discrete (counted) and continuous (measured) data, then asks whether a value like 2.5 children or a 12.5 kg dog could happen. Page 5 asks students to write a survey question for each kind of data and to choose the fairest of three samples. The first problem on each page is done as an example.
Ask the class two questions, "What is your favorite season?" and "How many people live in your home?", and write the answers on the board. Which answers are words and which are numbers? Which could you show on a line plot? Then ask how you would find out the favorite season of the whole school without asking everyone, and whether asking only the ski club would be fair.
Look at a survey or poll in the news or on a cereal box together. Who was asked, and how many? Could the people asked lean one way? Talk about things you count (people, goals, pets) and things you measure (height, time, mass) around the house.
This pack supports the following Common Core State Standards for Mathematics:
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The kinds of data a survey can collect, and how the people asked are chosen. Students sort category and number data, pick the graph that fits, judge samples as fair or biased, tell discrete from continuous data and write survey questions of their own.
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