Measures of Central Tendency ACTIVITY

Game Day 5.2

SUGGESTED LEARNING STRATEGIES: Activating Prior
Knowledge, Interactive Word Wall, Marking the Text,
Summarize/Paraphrase/Retell, Think/Pair/Share My Notes

Matthew is a student reporter for the Culliver A.Tomas Middle

School newspaper. His assignment for the next issue is to write an
article about the fans who attend school basketball games.
To begin, Matthew decides to investigate the ages of the people
who attend the next game. On game day, he randomly selects 21 fans
and asks their age. The numerical data he collects is listed in the chart
below.

Age of Fans
42 12 11 12 43 13 9
13 12 12 31 11 36 3
13 40 39 10 14 30 36

The mean, median, and mode of a numerical data set are called MATH TERMS
measures of central tendency. Since these measures are usually Measures of central
tendency—the mean, median,
located in the middle of the data, they are chosen as representatives
and mode—describe what is
of the entire data set. near the middle of a distribution
of numbers; for example, the
1. Recall that the mean is the sum of the data values divided by average age of middle school
the number of data items. Determine the mean age of fans who students (mean).
attended the basketball game.
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2. The mode is the value or values that occur most often. What is
the mode of the age of fans who attended the basketball game?

3. The median divides the data into two sets of data with the same
number of elements in each set. Follow the steps below to find
the median of the age of fans in the data set.
If a data set has an odd number
of data items, the median is the
a. Arrange all the data items in order from smallest to largest.
middle element of the ordered
list. If the list has an even number
of data items, the median is the
average of the middle two data
b. Determine the number that divides the ordered list of data items in the ordered list.
into two equal halves.

Unit 5 • Probability and Statistics 265

 ACTIVITY 5.2 Measures of Central Tendency
continued Game Day

SUGGESTED LEARNING STRATEGIES: Debrief, Discussion

Group, Quickwrite
My Notes
The ages of the cheerleaders on the middle school cheerleading
squad are given below.

Ages of Cheerleaders
ACADEMIC VOCABULARY
11 11 12 12 12 13 13 13 13 14 14

Numerical data is 4. Do these numbers represent numerical data or categorical

quantitative. It is a variables? Explain.
collection of numbers.
Categorical variables are
qualitative. Gender and
eye color are examples of
5. Determine all three measures of central tendency for the ages of
categorical data. the cheerleaders on the squad.

The cheerleading squad has decided to have a cheerleader mascot.

She is the little sister of one of the cheerleaders on the squad, and
she is 3 years old.

6. Determine the mean, median, and mode of the cheerleaders if

the age of their mascot is included.

MATH TERMS 7. Describe how this outlier affects the mean, median, and mode
Outliers are individual data of the data set.

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points that do not fit the overall
pattern of the data set.

8. Which single measure serves as the best representative of the

data with the outlier? Explain.

9. Which of the measures of central tendency is the most affected

by the inclusion of the outlier? Explain.

10. Which measure of central tendency: mean, median, or mode

must be a value in the data set? Explain.

266 SpringBoard® Mathematics with MeaningTM Level 3

 Measures of Central Tendency ACTIVITY 5.2
Game Day continued

SUGGESTED LEARNING STRATEGIES: Interactive Word Wall,

Debrief, Discussion Group, Think/Pair/Share
My Notes
For Matthew’s article, he has decided to include a box-and-whisker
plot to represent the numerical data he collected regarding the age of MATH TERMS
the fans who attend the game. The data he collected is shown below. A box-and-whisker plot is a
diagram that summarizes data
Age of Fans by dividing it into four parts,
each representing 25% of the
42 12 11 12 43 13 9
data entries. Box-and-whisker
13 12 12 31 11 36 3 plots have the following shape:
13 40 39 10 14 30 36

11. List the data in the table from least to greatest, and circle the
median.

The median of the lower half of the data is called the lower
quartile, and the median of the upper half is called the upper
quartile.

12. Find the lower and upper quartiles of your data list.

13. Graph the values of the lower quartile, median, and upper
quartile as points above the number line below.
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A five-number summary consists

3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 27 30 33 36 39 42 45
of the five numbers needed to
make a box-and-whisker plot:
14. Use the number line in Question 13 for the following: minimum, lower quartile, median,
upper quartile, maximum.
a. Create a rectangle using the lower quartile and the median
as the midpoint of the sides of the rectangle.

b. Now, create another rectangle using the upper quartile and

the median as the midpoints of the sides of the rectangle.

c. Finally, graph the values of the maximum and the minimum

as points above the number line given above. Connect the
lower quartile to the minimum with a line segment. Connect
the upper quartile to the maximum with a line segment.

Unit 5 • Probability and Statistics 267

 ACTIVITY 5.2 Measures of Central Tendency
continued Game Day

SUGGESTED LEARNING STRATEGIES: Interactive Word Wall,

Debrief, Think/Pair/Share, Quickwrite
My Notes
15. Use percentages to describe the distribution of the data repre-
sented by the box-and-whisker plot.

16. The interquartile range (IQR) is the difference between the

lower and upper quartiles.

a. Determine the interquartile range for the age of the fans.

b. What percent of the data set is represented by the IQR?

17. Explain why you cannot determine the mean or the mode of
the data set by looking at a box-and-whisker plot.

© 2010 College Board. All rights reserved.

268 SpringBoard® Mathematics with MeaningTM Level 3

 Measures of Central Tendency ACTIVITY 5.2
Game Day continued

SUGGESTED LEARNING STRATEGIES: Interactive Word Wall,

Debrief, Think/Pair/Share, Quickwrite, Discussion Group
My Notes
The box-and-whisker plot below shows the average number of
points scored per game by each player on the basketball team this
season.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

18. What is the median number of points scored by a player?

19. What is the lower quartile?

20. What percent of the players have average scores that are below
10 points?

21. What is the range of the average number of points scored in a ACADEMIC VOCABULARY
game as displayed in the box-and-whisker plot above?
As a measure of central
tendency, the range of data
© 2010 College Board. All rights reserved.

is the difference between

22. Two box-and-whisker plots have the same median and the minimum and maximum
equally long whiskers. If the box of one plot is longer than the values of the data set.
box of the other, what can you say about the two data sets?

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Unit 5 • Probability and Statistics 269

 ACTIVITY 5.2 Measures of Central Tendency
continued Game Day

CHECK YOUR UNDERSTANDING

Write your answers
answers on
on notebook
notebook paper.
paper.Show your work.
5. Two box-and-whisker plots have the same
Show your work. median and lower and upper extremes. If
1. Kylie surveyed 9 of her friends about how the box of one plot is longer than the box
many people lived in their households. of the other, what can you say about the
Her results are shown in the table below. two data sets?

Number of People Living in a Household

3 4 3 5 2 8 10 4 4
a. What is the mean of Kylie’s data set?
b. What is the median of Kylie’s data set?
c. What is the mode of Kylie’s data set?
d. Give the outlier for this data set.
Describe how the outlier affects the
mean, median and mode of the data. 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

e. Which measure of central tendency 6. MATHEMATICAL Compare using measures

is most representative of this data set?
Explain.
2. The values in a data set are 10, 7, 9, 5, 13,
10, 7, 14, 8, and 11. Which measure of
central tendency gives the answer 9.5 for
R E F L E C T I O N of central tendency and
the range to describe data to using a
box-and-whisker plot to describe data.
Discuss the strengths and weaknesses
of both.

© 2010 College Board. All rights reserved.

this data set?
3. Which is not a measure of central tendency
for the data set: 4, 6, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 11?
a. 6 b. 8 c. 9 d. 11
4. Consider the data set: 14, 8, 13, 20, 15, 17, 1,
12, 18, 10
a. Make a box-and-whisker plot of the
data set.
b. What percent of the data is greater than
13.5?
c. What is the lower quartile?
d. What is the upper quartile?
e. What is the interquartile range?

270 SpringBoard® Mathematics with MeaningTM Level 3