Data Basics
What is data?
Information collected for study or analysis.
Which graph is best for comparing students' favorite sports?
Bar graph.
What is a pattern in data?
Something that repeats or can be observed in the data.
A class records everyone's favorite school subject. Is this categorical or numerical data?
Categorical data.
What does it mean to organize data?
Putting information into a clear, orderly format.
What is data analysis?
Examining data to find patterns, meaning, or answers
Which graph is useful for showing temperature changes over several days?
Line graph.
Temperatures over four days are 65°, 68°, 71°, and 74°. What pattern do you notice?
The temperature increases by 3° each day.
Four students read 2, 4, 4, and 10 books. What is the mean?
5 books.
Why should you check data for mistakes before analyzing it?
Mistakes can lead to incorrect conclusions.
What is data cleaning?
Finding and correcting inaccurate, incomplete, or duplicate data.
In a pie chart, what does each slice represent?
A category's share of the whole.
What is an outlier?
A value that is very different from most other values
Twelve students walk to school, 8 ride the bus, and 5 get driven. How many students were surveyed?
25 students.
A student records the same survey response twice. What problem does this create?
Duplicate data that could affect the results.
Why should data be organized before analyzing it?
To make it easier to understand, compare, and interpret.
How can starting a graph's vertical axis at 90 instead of 0 be misleading?
It can make small differences appear much larger.
Students who study more often tend to earn higher test scores. What type of relationship might this show?
A positive relationship or association.
A survey about favorite sports only asks students on the basketball team. Why might the results be biased?
The students may not represent the opinions of the whole school.
You have survey results with inconsistent labels, such as “Seventh Grade,” “7th Grade,” and “Grade 7.” What should you do?
Standardize the labels so the same category is recorded consistently.
A spreadsheet has missing answers and duplicate entries. What should you do before analyzing it?
Clean the data by checking missing information and removing duplicates when appropriate.
A graph has no labels on its axes. Why is this a problem?
Readers may not understand what the values represent.
Ice cream sales and swimming pool visits both increase in summer. Does this prove ice cream causes more swimming? Explain.
No. Warmer weather could cause both to increase. A relationship does not prove causation.
A school wants to know if a new study program improves grades. What data should it compare?
Grades before and after the program, while considering other factors that could affect results.
You receive a spreadsheet with missing values, duplicate records, and inconsistent labels. Explain two steps you should take before creating a graph.
Check how to handle missing values, remove duplicate records when appropriate, and standardize inconsistent labels. Any two earn credit.