Data Handling
Primary 6 · Mathematics
Data Handling
Lesson 1 of 4
16 min
Let's begin
The head teacher wants to build a safe crossing near the school gate. First she needs to know: how do our pupils travel to school? Mugisha's P6 class offers to find out.
They could guess. But a good decision needs real information, called data. In this lesson you will learn how to collect data and organise it so that it makes sense at a glance.
A question for collecting data is one where you expect many different answers. "How do pupils in our school travel to school?" is a good one: some walk, some cycle, some come by moto. "How does Keza travel to school?" is not, because it has only one answer.
Numerical data that come from counting can only be whole numbers (you cannot have 4.5 pupils), so we call them discrete. Data that come from measuring, like height or mass, can take any value, so we call them continuous.
Be fair: to learn about the whole school, ask many pupils from different classes, not just your friends.
As each answer comes in, draw one stroke. The fifth stroke goes across the four before it, making a "gate" of 5. Then you can count quickly in fives.
The frequency of a value is the number of times it occurs. A frequency table lists each value with its tally and its frequency. Here are the results of Mugisha's class survey:
| Way of travel | Frequency |
|---|---|
| Walk | 14 |
| Bicycle | 6 |
| Moto | 4 |
| Bus | 3 |
| Car | 3 |
| Total | 30 |
Worked example
reading the table.
Tip
One stroke per answer, and the fifth stroke closes the gate. When you finish, add up the frequencies: the total must equal the number of people you asked.
Answers
What you learned today
Sources and credits
The school-travel survey, the tally drawing and the worked example were written by Ganzaa. The definitions of discrete and continuous data are adapted from Siyavula.
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