We had some fun learning about the Mode, Median and Outlier yesterday and today! Just to refresh your memory (smile), here are the definitions. For today’s homework, everyone will be creating a poster to help them to remember each term, so just ask your child to tell you about his/her poster tonight. We also went beyond and learned a few new terms as well, which will come in handy when our Terra Nova tests come around next year.
FIRST STEP IS TO ALWAYS PUT YOUR NUMBERS IN ORDER FROM LEAST TO GREATEST.
Mean: is the average. I described it to them that the mean, is the MEAN thing to do, because it involves gathering (adding) everyone up and then splitting (dividing) them up. I used the example that what if I gathered up all of their family members and then split them up in each continent…that would be pretty MEAN thing for me to do, right?
Median: is the middle number. I taught them to use their fingers (one on the first number, and the other on the last number), then bunny hop until their fingers meet in the middle. If they end up with two numbers, they need to add both numbers and then divide by 2 to get the median.
Mode: is the most popular number (the number that appears the most).
Outlier: the number that is outside of the box. This poor number is the outcast…he is either too big or too small to fully be apart of the group.
Range: The difference between the largest and smallest number. To find this out, you would subtract your smallest number, from the largest number.
Here is the link for the website that we used today. I’m also attaching another fun link to try!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/teachers/ks2_activities/maths/mode_median_mean.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/digger/9_11entry/5.shtml
