Data Handling

There is a massive amount of data in the world and we need techniques
to make sense of all those numbers. The data may relate to body weight
of us humans in the Uk. It could be the average number of peas in a pod,
it could be the average litres of petrol a car uses in a week. It could
be ...

As an example, to start we always need data.
Lets take peas in a pod (it could well be useful to a farmer who wants
to know how many plants to grow to get a certain size crop)

So here are the number of peas in 9 pods picked at random from a batch.

3, 8, 4, 7, 5, 7, 6, 9, 7

Put them all in order from the smallest to the largest

3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9

Now we can do something useful and find the Median, Mode, Mean and Range

The Median is the middle value of 7

The Mode is the most common occuring value,
again this is 7 (the only one that occurs more than once).

The Mean is found by adding all the numbers and dividing by the sample size

Mean=(3+4+5+6+7+7+7+8+9)/9 = 56/9 = 6.2 to 1 decimal place

And finally the range is found by taking the smallest from the largest
Range=9-3 = 6

Median, Mode, Mean and Range have their uses.

Try Data Handling BBC bitesize for some more detail.