Statistics is all about data; collecting it, analysing it and presenting it. Statisticians use different ways of representing data to make it easier to read and understand.
Once statistics have been collected and analysed, they can be used to make decisions and plan. For example, if a shop collects data about how many people use the shop at different times of day, they can organise the rota to make sure there are always enough staff.
Teach your children about statistics using our handy topic guide!
Teaching Ideas
- Give children some sporting statistics to work with, like our Winter Olympics sheet.
- Use the information on our Dinosaur fact cards to produce some graphs showing their weights and heights.
- This sheet is structured to help children generate data and complete a pie chart on a subject of their choice.
- This sheet is perfect for applying knowledge of averages.
- Ask children to interpret data from a pictogram.
- Use this Oak National Academy Scheme of Work for interpreting and presenting data.
- This NRICH investigation challenges the children to interpret data in various ways, and represent it.
Resources
- Download our Statistics Pack for plenty of resources and activities.
- Grab some free statistics templates: Choose from Pie Charts, Graphs, Block Graphs, Carroll Diagrams and Venn Diagrams.
- Print your own graph paper.
- Print out our handy posters when teaching about averages. Choose from: Range, Mean, Median, and Mode.
- Save yourself some time with our display resources: Venn Diagrams Banner and Poster, Carroll Diagrams Banner and Poster, Statistics Banner, Data Handling Banner.
Statistics Facts
- The oldest known statistics are over five thousand years old. The Ancient Babylonians collected information about people for a census. (A census is a way of finding out who lives in a place and what they are like. The Babylonians collected this information so that they knew how much food they needed to feed everyone.
- A Carroll diagram is named after its inventor; Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland. He was also an accomplished mathematician.
- Presenting data can help people to understand it better. For example, a bar chart can show information more clearly than a list.
- The mean of a data set is the average. This is found by adding all of the values together and dividing by the number of times in the set. For example, 5 children play a game. The scores they get are 2, 4, 3, 5 and 1. 2+4+3+5+1=15. 15÷5=3. The mean score for all the children is 3.
- Florence Nightingale collected statistics about soldiers in hospital during the Crimean War and used it to identify how to improve conditions. She invented a diagram that clearly showed that many more soldiers died from disease than from injuries.
Videos
Easy Statistics For Kids
Collect data on cars going over Blackfriar’s Bridge using a tally chart, and then construct a graph.
Running time: 4:55
Carroll Diagrams
This diagram shows worked examples of placing items in a Carroll diagram.
Running time: 2:07
Tally Charts
A clear explanation of how to collect data using a tally chart.
Running time: 2:17
Books
If the World Were a Village
This interesting book presents data as if the world were a village of 100 people, helping children to visualise the information.
Guinness World Records 2022
This fascinating book is always a great source of data that children enjoy reading.
Links
- Our World in Data has information on lots of topics, really useful for finding real-world data for children to interpret.
- Answer questions about the data in the pictograph in this game.
- The CIA World Factbook is a great source of data about different countries.
- Help Curious George make a graph about hats.
- This interactive teaching resource allows you to quickly make different forms of graphs and charts.
- Answer questions based on simple bar charts on this page.
Are you teaching your children about other topics? Explore our full collection of guides!
