Collecting and Organising Data

Class 6 Maths · Chapter 4: Data Handling and Presentation · NCERT Ganita Prakash section 4.1

Learn

Data is a collection of facts, numbers or observations that tells us something. The heights of your classmates are data. So is a list of what everyone had for breakfast today.

Class 6 is choosing a place for their school trip. Aditi asked every classmate and wrote down the answers. But just looking at the long list, can you tell which place is most popular?

To organise data, write each choice once and put a tally mark for every answer. The fifth mark crosses the four before it, so we can count in fives. The count for each choice is its frequency. Here, the sports-day snack votes:

|||| || = 7 · |||| |||| | = 11

Putting data in order helps too. Glasses of water drunk yesterday by 20 children, from least to most: 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7. Now we see at once: the most anyone drank was 7, and 6 children drank exactly 4 glasses.

Explore: be the data collector. Sort the first 12 trip votes into a tally table.

1. Tap the place for each vote, one by one.
2. Two places are tied for the most votes. Tap both of them.

Remember

• Data: facts, numbers or observations that give information.
• Tally marks count in fives; the count of each group is its frequency.

Quick check

In a tally table, what does |||| ||| mean?

1. 7
2. 8
3. 9
4. 13

Think about it

Kabir wants to know two things: the favourite fruit in his class, and how many days there are in a leap year. For which one must he collect data?

Practice

Practise with fresh questions at three levels (easy, medium, hard), some answered hands-on, with hints and worked answers. Get 4 of your last 5 right to finish the topic.