Hinglish

Of Questions and Statements

Class 7 Maths · Chapter 13: Connecting the Dots… · NCERT Ganita Prakash section P2 5.1

Learn

Your teacher is meeting two old friends: one is 5 feet tall, one 6 feet. Most people guess the shorter one is a woman. They might be wrong, but experience with lots of people says men are usually taller. Reasoning from patterns in many observations is statistical thinking.

"Our village population fell by about 100 in ten years." "I take about 15 minutes to cycle home." These are statistical statements: claims based on numbers, proportions or predictions, made from data that varies.

A statistical question is answered by collecting data that varies. "How tall are the Class 7 students in our school?" is one: heights differ. "How tall is Kabir?" is not: it has one answer. Nor is "Do you like reading?", asked of one person.

Statistics is the study of collecting, organising, analysing, interpreting and presenting data. In this chapter we summarise data with single numbers, picture it with dot plots and double bar graphs, and play data detective.

Explore: statistical or not?

  1. Sort the questions.

Remember

  • A statistical question is answered by collecting data that varies.
  • Statistics: collect, organise, analyse, interpret and present data.

Quick check

Which is a statistical question?

  1. What fraction of our class likes hiking?
  2. Do you like hiking?
  3. How high is that hill?
  4. Is today Monday?
Answer

What fraction of our class likes hiking?. Its answer needs data from many students, which varies.

Think about it

Turn "How long did Meher sleep last night?" into a statistical question.

One answer

For example: "How long do students in our class usually sleep at night?" Now many answers are expected, so we 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.