TELEPHONES
This file contains data on the percentage of homes in the UK that owned
a telephone from 1936 to 2006.
How has home telephone ownership changed in the UK since 1948?
◆ Ask the children to work out how many telephones they have at home.
They should include mobile phones as well as landlines.
◆ Make a frequency table of the results. Note who has a home in which there are
more telephones than people.
Data set provided.
Graph types:
Frequency table,
line graph.
Variables: Year,
percentage of homes.
◆ Display the Telephones data table. Ensure that the children notice that the figures
are percentages.
◆ Create a line graph of the percentage of homes with telephones, against the year
(with the year as the independent variable), with the children suggesting the scale and titles for the axes.
◆ Ask the children to identify three facts from the graph. Ask: What is surprising? If they lived in 1936, how many
children in the class would have had a telephone in their home? Did the ownership of telephones grow steadily?
Why might this have been?
◆ Ask the children whether knowing this information about telephone ownership could help them find out about the
ownership of other items in the home, such as televisions or fridges. They could investigate data for these items by
looking at the relevant statistics from the Web site for the Office for National Statistics: http//www.statistics.gov.uk.
Ask: Which results are surprising when you compare them with the data for telephones? Why might there have
been this difference?
Cross-curricular links
History (QCA, Unit 13 – How has life in Britain changed since 1948?).
ICT (QCA, Unit 5b – Analysing data and asking questions using complex searches).
PNS, Mathematics (Counting and understanding number).
ROLLER COASTERS
This file contains information on roller coasters at theme parks around the
United Kingdom.
What is the height of the maximum drop of these roller coasters?
◆ Create a bar chart showing the maximum drops of all the roller coasters in the
Roller Coasters data table. Ask: How would you describe the graph? Do the rides
have similar drops, or do they vary? What is the difference between the tallest drop
and the shortest?
Data set provided.
Graph types:
Bar chart
Variables:
Roller coaster name,
theme park, maximum drop,
minimum height of riders.
◆ Filter the graph by the different locations. Where there is more than one ride listed
for a theme park, ask: What is the height difference between the tallest and the
shortest drops for the rides shown? Why might theme parks want to have rides of different heights?
Which rides would most children in our class be able to go on?
◆ Measure the heights of all the children in the class.
◆ Create a new data table and a bar chart to show how many children are of particular heights. Calculate the modal
height in the class.
◆ Sort the Roller Coaster data table by column E (Minimum height of riders). Discuss whether or it is a good idea for
the height restrictions of a ride to be given on the ride itself.
◆ Ask the children to work out the modal minimum height for all the rides, apart from the Wild Racer and the Dipper?
◆ Compare the sorted Roller Coaster data table with the bar chart of the children’s heights. Ask: Is there a ride that
most children in the class would be able to go on? What would the minimum heights of the White Water and the
Big Dipper have to be, for all children in the class to be able to go on them?
Cross-curricular links
PNS, Mathematics (Measuring; Calculating).
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