Illustrative Mathematics · Grade 6 · Unit 8 · Data Sets and Distributions
Every data set has a story. Crack the case: spot statistical questions, read dot plots and histograms, find the mean as a balance point, measure spread with the MAD, find the median and quartiles, and read box plots. Each station matches lessons from class. New to this? Learn it first →
Each station deals 8 fresh problems (Case Closed deals 10). A right answer on the first try earns 10 points. After a wrong answer, the game names the likely mistake and gives one more try for 5 points. Fraction answers can be typed as 3/20 or as a decimal.
Data sets are small (4 to 20 values) and realistic for their context: pets per home, hours of sleep, quiz scores, goals in a game. Means come out to whole numbers or halves, and MADs to at most two decimal places, so the challenge is the idea, not the arithmetic.
Hints draw the picture that makes the idea visible: the dots being counted turn blue, the mean appears as a balance point with each dot’s distance to it, the median line appears on a dot plot, and a box plot is drawn over its own dots so each quarter of the data shows.
A question with only one answer taken for a statistical question, counting columns instead of dots, a histogram’s interval edge read as a count, a flat histogram read as less spread out, the total not divided (or divided by the wrong count), signed distances that add to 0 for the MAD, the median of an unsorted list, one of two middle values for the median, the middle value kept in a half for a quartile, the range for the IQR, and a longer part of a box plot read as holding more data.
Collecting and studying a class’s own data (Lessons 1 and 18) works better in class than as scored problems.