Unit 4: Reasoning with Data Exercises Math MYP 4

4.5 Frequency Tables & Bar Charts

Exercise 1
The following marks were obtained in a class quiz.

a) Is the data categorical/qualitative or quantitative? If it is quantitative, is it discrete or continuous?

b) Organise these scores into a frequency table.

Mark (𝑥) Tally Frequency (𝑓)

Total

c) What is the total frequency? How is this related to n?

!"#
d) What value would be the median? 𝑚𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑎𝑛 = $
𝑡ℎ 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒

e) What is the mode?

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Unit 4: Reasoning with Data Exercises Math MYP 4

Exercise 2

A group of students created a competition to see who could do the most sit ups. They collected the data,
organised it into a frequency table and used a bar chart to represent their data.
a) Use the representation, the bar graph, to fill out the frequency table.

Sit Ups (𝑥) Frequency (𝑥)

48
49

50
51
52
53

Total

b) What is the mode?

c) How can you find the mode, the most common data value recorded from a bar graph?

d) What is the range of push ups that were recorded?

Exercise 3

a) What is the mode in the following bar

chart?

b) What type of data did they collect?

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Unit 4: Reasoning with Data Exercises Math MYP 4

Exercise 4
Describe the distribution of the data as symmetrical (or approximately symmetrical), positively/right
skewed or negatively/left skewed using the bar charts.
a) Data set 1 b) Data set 2 c) Data set 3

Exercise 5
20 students were asked “how many pets do you have in your household”? and the following data was
collected: 2, 1, 0, 3, 1, 2, 1, 3, 4, 0, 0, 2, 2, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1

a) What is the variable in this investigation?

b) Is the data discrete or continuous? Why?

c) Construct a bar chart to represent the data. Use a heading for the graph, add an appropriate scale
to the axes and a label to each axis.
You can complete this in your book using the grid. Remember to use a frequency table to organise
your data first.

d) How would you describe the distribution of the data? Is it symmetrical, positively skewed or
negatively skewed?

e) What fraction of the household has no pets? Can you write this as a percentage?

f) What fraction of the household had three or more pets? What percentage?

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Unit 4: Reasoning with Data Exercises Math MYP 4

Exercise 6
A randomly selected sample of shoppers was asked, “how many times did you shop at a supermarket in the
past week?” A column graph was constructed for the results.

a) How many shoppers gave data in the survey?

b) How many of the shoppers shopped once or twice?

c) What percentage of the shoppers shopped more than four

times?

d) Describe the distribution of the data.

Exercise 7
Calculating the mean from a frequency table
Over the summer, a student decided to get a part time job and started collecting data on how many hours a
day they worked. The data is organised in the frequency table below.

a) Find the mean, the average amount of hours that the student worked per day.

Number of hours Frequency Total hours 𝑠𝑢𝑚 𝑜𝑓 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑎

𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛 =
𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑎
of work (𝑥) (𝑓) 𝑓𝑥

4 4
𝑡𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑑
𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛 =
5 5 𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑑𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑒𝑑

6 7
𝛴𝑓𝑥
x̄ =
7 3 𝑛
8 2

Total

b) Verify with your calculator.

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Unit 4: Reasoning with Data Exercises Math MYP 4

Exercise 8
The number of toothpicks in a box is stated as 50, but the actual number of toothpicks has been found to
vary. To investigate this, the number of toothpicks in a box was counted for a sample of 60 boxes.

a) Construct a frequency table for this data.

b) Represent the data using a bar chart.

c) Describe the distribution of the data.

d) Use the table to calculate the median and the mean.

e) How does the distribution of the data affect the measures of centre?

Exercise 9

The data below, has a mean of 2. However, two of the frequencies are missing. Use your knowledge on how
we find the mean from frequency tables and your problem-solving skills to find the possible missing
frequencies.

Number of siblings Frequency 𝒇𝒙

0 1
1 6
2
3
4 0
5 2
Total 22

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Unit 4: Reasoning with Data Exercises Math MYP 4

Exercise 10
The following frequency table records the number of text messages sent in a day by 50 fifteen-year-olds.

No. of messages (x) Frequency (𝑓)

0 2 a) For this data, use your calculator to find the:
1 4 i. Mean
2 7
ii. Median
3 4
4 2 iii. Mode
5 0
6 1 b) Construct a bar chart for the data
7 8
8 13
9 7
10 2
Total 40

Exercise 11

Match the bar graphs to their boxplots. Do you notice any patterns?

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Unit 4: Reasoning with Data Exercises Math MYP 4

Exercise 12
In this exercise, we are going to investigate how the distribution affects the measures of centre.
You are going to investigate several bar charts, and are provided the first one as an example.

Bar Chart A
The graph given shows the results when 3 coins were tossed
simultaneously 40 times. The number of heads appearing was
recorded.
1. Create a frequency table to organise the data and insert it
into your calculator.
2. Use your calculator to find the mean and the median.
3. Represent the mean and median on the bar graph using a
ruler to draw a vertical line and labelling it.
4. Reflect on how the distribution of the data affects the measures of centre.

The bar chart shows that the data has a symmetrical

distribution. Since it is symmetrically distributed, all of the
Mode= 1, 2
Mean=1.4
Median=1
measures of centre are located in the centre of the bar
chart and are all quite representative of the data.

Bar Chart B Bar Chart C

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Unit 4: Reasoning with Data Exercises Math MYP 4

Exercise 13
A randomly selected sample of small business were asked, “How many full-time employees are there in your
business?”. A bar chart has been constructed for the results.

a) Estimate around what you believe the measures of

centre will be from the bar chart and the information
you found from the previous exercise. Explain your
reasoning
a. mean

b. median

c. mode

b) Verify by finding the mean and the median from the bar chart.