Present Topic: Data Descriptions

In Red/Green math we are expanding on the kids' fourth grade experiences to examine data sets and identify certain benchmarks in the data:

• The Range
  The span of values from the minimum to the maximum.
• The Mode
  The most frequent value.
• The Median
  The centre-most value when all values are lined-up.

Our standards do not call for fifth graders to understand the average, but the students have used that particular calculated description often in their science classes. Averages are not the best way to handle data sets, however, because they contain no sense of scale of the range or possible values. In middle school, while students will know what an average is, they will be asked to use "boxplots" to compare data sets.

So right now we are just building the basic reference points in single data sets to try and describe their size and some central numbers within them.