Stem and leaf diagrams

A stem and leaf diagram is one way of grouping your data into classes and showing the
shape of the data.
Investigation example
A maths test is marked out of 50. The marks for the class are shown below:
7 36 41 39 27 21 24 17 24 31
17 13 46 50 23 31 19 8 10 14
45 49 50 45 32 25 17 18 12 6
This is all the information you need, but it is very hard to interpret. For example, is it easy to tell
whether more children got marks in the 20s than the 30s? Can you tell at a glance what the highest
mark was, or whether more than one person achieved the same result?
One way to represent the data so that you can answer these questions is in astem and leaf diagram.
This diagram shows exactly the same results as in the example above:

The stem and leaf diagram is formed by splitting the numbers into two parts - in this case
tens and units.
The tens form the 'stem' and the units form the 'leaves'.
This information is given in the Key.
The numbers are usually ordered, so the row:

shows the numbers 21, 23, 24, 24, 25, and 27 in order.