By the end of this lesson, your students will be able to understand the basic concepts of mean and mode, calculate the mean and mode from a set of data, and apply these concepts to real-life situations.
Whiteboard and markers
A jar of candies (or any small items like paperclips or marbles)
Additional practice problems
Mean: The average number in a set of data.
Mode: The number that occurs most frequently in a data set.
Today, we're diving into statistics, but don't worry, this isn't about boring numbers. You actually use statistics all the time without even realizing it.
We will explore two key tools: mean and mode.
Let's kick things off with something sweet—literally. I have this jar of candies here. (Show the jar to the class.) We're going to use them to learn about mean and mode.
First, I'm going to hand out candy to everyone. But here's the twist—everyone will get a different number of candies. Some might get five, some might get seven, and so on.
Now that everyone has their candies, count them up. How many do you have? (Give students a minute to count.)
Next, let's list everyone's numbers on the board. (Go around the room and collect your candy data.) Look at all those different amounts.
But what if we wanted to figure out a fair way to distribute the candies? That's where the mean, or average, comes in.
To calculate the mean, add all the candies and divide by the number of students in our class.
Walk your students through adding up the numbers and dividing by the total number of students.
The number we get is our mean—the average number of candies each person would have if we shared them equally.
But there's another friend in the world of statistics. The mode tells us which number appears the most.
In our candy example, X would be our mode since most of you were given X candies. (Replace "X" with the mode from your class data set.)
Now that we understand the basics let's try another data set. (Either pass out simple data sets or put them in a PowerPoint.)
Let's work together on the first one.
The number of books read by students over a month: 3, 4, 6, 6, 2, 3, 5, 6, 4.
Add up all the numbers (3, 4, 6, 6, 2, 3, 5, 6, 4) and divide by how many numbers there are (9).
3 + 4 + 6 + 6 + 2 + 3 + 5 + 6 + 4 = 39
39 / 9 = 4.3
Each student read 4.3 books on average.
Which number appears the most in our data set?
3, 4, 6, 6, 2, 3, 5, 6, 4.
That's right—it's 6. Three students read 6 books in a month.
If your students struggle to "see" the mode, teach them to rewrite their data set to clearly show it.
For example, reorder your data set to read:
2
3, 3
4, 4
5
6, 6, 6
Solve the rest of the problems independently, and don't hesitate to ask for help.
Imagine you're a basketball coach. You want to determine how well your team performs, but everyone scores differently in each game. By finding the mean, you can get a good idea of how your team is doing. But then you notice one player's score pops up more often than others. That's your mode. (To bring this example to life, use data from the Boston Celtics, the most recent NBA champions.)
Or think about your grades—mean and mode help teachers understand how the class is doing. If the mean score on a test is 80%, that's how the class is averaging out. But if most students got an 82%, that's the mode telling a different story. (Without revealing individual grades, use your class's most recent testing data to find the mean and mode.)
Create your own set of data. For example, list the number of hours you spend on your phone in a week or the number of push-ups you can do each day. Then, calculate the mean and mode for your data. Be ready to have your classmates solve your data set.
Written by Brooke Lektorich
Education World Contributor
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