Data literacy · Learning activity

Data desk

Keep the distribution in view while changing the summary.

Up to 100 finite values. The initial data is a fictional example.

Ask what changed

Both 4, 5, 5, 5, 6 and 1, 2, 5, 8, 9 have mean 5. Their ranges differ. The example 2, 3, 4, 5, 26 has mean 8 and median 4. Use the plots to explain why the summaries behave differently.

The desk describes entered numbers; it cannot establish whether a sample represents a population or whether an unusual observation should be removed.