Activity 7B: Data Analysis
Category 4: Data Analysis and Personal Financial Literacy
Activity 7B: Displaying Data in a Dot Plot, Stem-and-Leaf Plot, and Scatter Plot
Objective: The students will summarize data, solve problems, and create dot plots,
stem-and-leaf plots, and scatter plots
Procedure:
 Introduce the students to a dot plot. When you want to show the spread of the
data or how it is grouped instead of comparing the data, you use a dot plot. It
uses dots to record each piece of data above a number line or categories.
 This dot plot shows the number of pets owned by each student in a fifth grade
class.
0 1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8 9 10
Pets Owned By Students
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You can see that most students have 0, 1, or 2 pets.
There are also numbers that don’t have dots over them. There are no students
who have 5 or 6 pets.
The most pets owned by any students is 7.
The students will need to do other example problems with dot plots that use
whole numbers, decimals, and fractions. Include both one-step and two-step
problems.
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233
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A stem-and-leaf plot gives a quick way of checking how many pieces of data fall
in various ranges. They also display the value of every piece of data.
Since a stem-and-leaf plot can display both whole numbers and decimals, every
stem-and-leaf plot must have a key.
This stem and leaf plot shows the grades of students on a test.
Stem
6
7
8
9
10
8
1
2
1
0
Leaf
8 9
2 2 6 8
3 4 4 6 8 8 9
4 4 5 7
6 8 means a grade of 68
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The data shows that 3 students failed the test.
One student made a 100.
Most students passed with an 80 or above.
Five students scored above a 91.
The most students scored above an 81.
Eight students scored between 82 and 89.
The students will need to do other example problems with stem-and-leaf plots
that use whole numbers and decimals. Include both one-step and two-step
problems.
Introduce the students to a scatter plot. A scatter plot graphs two sets of data as
corresponding numbers represented as ordered pairs. You then decide if the
data of ordered pairs are related by how close they come to forming a straight
line or the line of best fit (sometimes called a trend line).
You then decide if the data of ordered pairs are related by how close they come
to forming a straight line or the line of best fit (sometimes called a trend line).
A group of students in the fourth grade class kept track of the number of hours
they spent studying for a test and the grade on each test. The table shows the
results.
Study Time (in hours)
Grade
234
1.5
60
3
85
2.5
80
2
70
4
90
1
60
3.5
85
5
100
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The ordered pairs are shown on the scatter plot.
100
90
80
Grade
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5
5
5.5
Study Time (hr.)
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In analyzing the data on scatter plots, you look for either a rising straight line or a
falling straight line to show the correlation. A horizontal straight line shows no
correlation between the data.
This data is a rising straight line. This indicates that there is a strong correlation
between the time spent studying and the test grade.
The more hours spent studying the better the test grade.
The students will need to do other example problems with scatter plots. Include
both one-step and two-step problems.
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235