Page 177 - Start Up Mathematics_6

9 Data Handling

You must have noticed that teachers collect and keep information about day-to-day progress of
students, doctors keep records of their patients, police collects information about unsocial elements
and criminals, and weather department keeps records of weather forecasts, etc. These pieces of
information and records in the form of numerical figures is called data. Data can be collected and
represented in various forms. This data helps us to plan and take decisions.

Collecting Data Name of the Destination
Roll No.
Let’s take an example, where class teacher asks student choice
each student to give the choice of destination for a 1 Amit Kashmir
trip from amongst the following: Shimla, Manali, 2 Ankit Manali
Kashmir or Agra. The teacher deputes the class 3 Anuradha Agra
monitor to prepare a list of the choices. The monitor 4 Anudita Kashmir
prepares the list as given alongside. 5 Arun Shimla

Immediately after this, the teacher asks the monitor of 6 Baljeet Manali
the class to give her the number of students interested 7 Chanchal Kashmir
in each destination. To count the destination-wise 8 Dilip Kashmir
choices was taking very long. Himani suggests to 9 Devendra Shimla
make four different groups according to the choice 10 Eshaan Kashmir
of destinations. Do you think that it will help to 11 Fatima Manali
calculate quickly? 12 Farida Shimla

Yes, the groups are already formed and we just 13 Gagandeep Agra
need to count and organize the number of students 14 Himani Kashmir
in each group. 15 Indira Kashmir

Organizing Data

Represent each student by a smiley against his or her destination. Now count the number of smileys
to get the number of students interested in a particular destination.

Destination Number of students
Kashmir       
Manali   

Shimla   
Agra  

This method of representing information through pictures is called a pictograph.
When the number of students is less, this kind of representation is feasible. But when the number
is large we may use tally marks instead of pictures to represent the choices of students. In tally
marks, we represent each unit of data by ‘|’ and a group of 5 by .