Mean, Median, Mode, and More
Today in class we learned about statistics! Statistics are an important part of just about every job and industry. Statistical information is used in the fashion, food and drug, and financial industries, and as a way to track climate, weather, homelessness, and more. Our world is driven by large amounts of data, and data requires the use of statistics to make sense of it all!
In class we learned about the 3 ways we calculate the ‘typical’ value in a set of data. These 3 ways are the mean (also called the “average”; add all the data and divide by the number of data points), the median (the middle value in a set of data points) and the mode (the most common value). We learned about these three measurements of central tendency using a fictional YumYum Bar that students could buy at one of 5 stores. Where did your child choose to buy their YumYum Bar?
There are many ways to illustrate data and today we learned how to create a box-and-whisker plot. This plot is an easy way to see a data set broken up into quartiles (25% pieces) and to illustrate the variability of a given data set. Ask your child to draw you a quick sample of the box-and-whisker plot to see if you can figure out where its name comes from!
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