Engage the interest of students by involving them in experiments to check the validity of:
- advertising campaigns.
- political assertions.
- safety strategies.
Prepare them for discussing political polls by having them collect social data using:
- questionnaires.
- surveys.
- interviews.
Data interpretation requires critical thinking skills, the ability to recognize trends and relationships, and identification of inconsistencies. This includes:
- identifying patterns.
- looking for missing data (errors).
- determining whether data fits the estimates.
- finding one-to-one relationships.
- sorting objects into useful arrangements.
- explaining similarities and differences.
- summarizing what the data might mean.
Student analysis of the data collected is facilitated by their prior scientific knowledge, mathematical skills, graphing techniques, and clear communication skills.
Students can learn how to take raw data and make it more accessible through graphic representation. The ability to decide whether a pie chart or a bar graph best illustrates one’s data has life-long value. Secondary students can become quite sophisticated in this area, by learning to use computer programs effectively.
Computer studies are now common at the upper secondary school level, and should include instruction on the graphic representation of data. Many common software applications provide basic graphing options.
Explaining data results is a language students need to learn. Once they have collected data, and made a graphic representation, students need to be able to explain what the data means. You can help students do this by modeling the explanation of assembled data first, and then have them explain the various representations to each other in pairs. Some questions may include:
- What did you find out from the data?
- What was the most common item?
- What was the least common item?
- What questions could not be answered with the data collected?
- What surprised you about the data?
Senior mathematics courses provide numerous opportunities to explore data representation, and students should be asked to explain their charts and graphs regularly to the teacher and to each other.