Frogs
In this lesson plan and associated presentation from CensusAtSchool, students are asked to remember how many frogs are on a slide when they have only had a few seconds to look at this. A student who has not been present is then asked to question the students about how many frogs were on the slide. Students will learn to understand…
What Is an Average?
This full lesson plan, plus dataset and worksheet, from CensusAtSchool is designed to help students understand the different types of average, how to calculate and compare them and which average it is appropriate to use for a particular data set.
5/5- Publication year: 2000 - 2009
- Activity sheet
Vitruvian Man
This new curriculum resource from CensusAtSchool is presented at two levels of difficulty. This idea is relatively current as it links with the 'Da Vinci code' and the theory of the Vitruvian man as put forward by Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). In 1492, Leonardo drew a picture of a man standing inside a circle…
Statistics Statements Key Stage Four
This CensusAtSchool resource is based on key concepts needed by students doing GCSE mathematics, although it may be useful for an introductory review at A level or for strong Key Stage Three students. Pairs are asked to discuss statements on cards and decide, with justifications, if the statement is true, false or sometimes true.…
Statistics Statements Key Stage Three
This Key Stage Three resource form CensusAtSchool is based on key concepts needed by students to understand basic statistics. Pairs are asked to discuss statements on cards and decide, with justifications, if the statement is true, false or sometimes true. Solutions are provided in a separate file. A wide range of mathematics…
Statisticians Galore
What do you know about statisticians? This resource from CensusAtSchool gives information about famous statisticians. This activity will provide a useful structure for encouraging students to think about what statistics is and improve their general knowledge about what statisticians have achieved.
Sample Data Handling
This resource from CensusAtSchool aimed at Year Nine students is a complete set of five or six lessons which gives an idea of how to implement the project in the classroom using the students' own data. There are comprehensive teachers’ notes, a dataset of over 100 students attributes, likes and dislikes. A problem…
Fee Fi Foo Fum
This lesson plan with starter, main and plenary from CensusAtSchool suitable for Year Eight students develops the concept of ratio. Students will Investigate the Golden Ratio (also known as Phi) using the ratio of height to belly button height data collected and presented as a dataset. The resource comes complete with lesson…
Displaying Data
This lesson plan from CensusAtSchool is easy to put into practice in the classroom and is targeting the Year Six key objective of ‘Solve a problem by extracting and interpreting information presented in tables, graphs and charts.’ It involves the students in doing simple surveys and underlines the key concept of using…
Data With No Name
In this resource from CensusAtSchool, a set of data is presented with little background information. Students are invited, via a series of questions, to turn the data into usable, useful information applying both mathematical reasoning and use of statistical methods. It encourages the use of spreadsheets as a means to further…
Cleaning the Data
When you have a set of data the first thing you need to do is to check it out and eliminate any obviously wrong or false data. This is called “Cleaning the Data”. This resource from CensusAtSchool provides a spreadsheet where several playful students have been deliberately tampering with the data. Students are…
Cars Galore
Comparing National Statistic data to CensusAtSchool data on car ownership and traffic is the task in this resource. Students are required to use their skills of reasoning to compare car ownership in different regions and interpretation of line graphs. In the extension task, students are required to read two-way tables and draw comparative…
Cars at Home
In this resource from CensusAtSchool, students are asked to collect data about the number of cars owned by the households of class members, and present it as a bar or frequency graph.
Box and Whisker Plots
In this resource from CensusAtSchool, students are guided through the use of box and whisker plots and the use of quartiles and the interquartile range. Students compare two sets of data of student heights by drawing box and whisker plots. This is an opportunity to use graphic calculators.
Birthdays
In this resource from CensusAtSchool. students compare data on month of birth from 45,000 South African students given in a table to the same data represented in a bar chart. Students are asked to consider reasons for month of birth and why it is appropriate to use percentages for large data sets.Students are then required to collect…
Big Schools
This resource from CensusAtSchool contains the data of the number of students in twenty of the largest schools in England. Students are asked to consider how location may impact on the size of the school and the numbers of students in a year group. Students are also required to compare their own school to others by drawing a picture…
Winning the Lottery
Aimed at students in Key Stage Four, this task from CensusAtSchool uses the context of the National Lottery to look at theoretical probabilities and compare these to a experimental data. The worksheet contains a link to a site to simulate a lottery draw. The activity allows students to investigate successive events and use tree diagrams.…
Too Many Boys in the Family?
A question posed by this resource from CensusAtSchool, investigating whether probability relates to reality. Real data is contrasted with the theoretical probabilities of the number of boys in a family, using the assumption that the probability of having a boy is 0.5. Equally likely outcomes, combined events, tree diagrams, binomial…
Relative Frequency
This resource from CensusAtSchool uses the ideas of estimating probabilities through finding the relative frequency of given data about favourite subjects at school. It uses sampling from different populations and investigates the effect of sample size on the estimated probability.
Fillings
In this resource from CensusAtSchool, students are asked to apply their knowledge of the Poisson distribution to real life data in the context of a school problem. This resource is good at contextualising and reinforcing understanding of the Poisson distribution, it requires students to consider developing a mathematical model with…
A Modal Pupil
This resource from CensusAtSchool produces descriptions of modal pupils using the data taken both from the original CensusAtSchol data and Phase Two of the project. The task encourages students to discuss and think about the merits of using averages. The mathematical topics of mean, median and mode are used and developed through…