Quick Questions: Learn About Data

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In this activity, learners will collect and analyze data to learn about the people around them. How many letters in everyone’s first name? What’s the most common number of letters? What’s most or least? Start out by posing a multiple choice question. Everyone records answers on a large chart. Then, explore the data. This works well as a family activity or in a public area—museum, library, school building. Post the chart and review answers after at least 100 people have responded. [Activity is publicly available through a web crawler capture on Archive.org.]

Quick Guide

Preparation Time:
Under 5 minutes
Learning Time:
5 to 10 minutes
Estimated Materials Cost:
free per group of students
Age Range:
Ages 4 - 14
Resource Type:
Activity
Language:
English

Materials List (per group of students)

  • large sheet of paper
  • markers or stickers

Keywords

Subjects

  • Mathematics
    • Data Analysis and Probability
      • Data Analysis
      • Data Collection
      • Data Representation
    • Number and Operations
      • Operations
    • Reasoning and Proof
    • Representation
  • The Nature of Science
    • The Scientific Process
      • About Inquiry
      • Asking Questions
      • Conducting Investigations
      • Gathering Data
      • Formulating Explanations
      • Communicating Results

Audience

To use this activity, learners need to:

  • see
  • read

Learning styles supported:

  • Involves teamwork and communication skills
  • Involves hands-on or lab activities

Other

Access Rights:

  • Free access

By:

Source Collection

  • Mixing in Math

Rights:

  • , © 2010, TERC, Inc., MA., 2010

Funding Source:

  • NSF, ESI-0406675 and DRL-0713537