What is Data You get statistical data when you ask questions that have more than one answer The data are numbers that you can analyze You count the different answers and get numbers that you can analyze You can get data when you count the answers to questions Students might choose corn carrots or peppers as their favorite vegetable in a class survey Suppose each picture is a vote for that vegetable Each vote is a data value Count them 4
There are 20 votes or 20 data values Organize the data by counting the number of votes for each vegetable 8 Carrots 10 Corn 2 Peppers Statistics are all about the questions you ask the kind of answers you can get how you organize the answers and how you display and understand those answers 5
Pictographs Our vegetable data are called categorical data The categories are the different vegetable choices and each choice or vote is one data value A pictograph is one way to organize categorical data A pictograph has a key that tells what each symbol stands for These are the categories Favorite Vegetables Using the key the dots in this row say 2 2 2 2 or 4 x 2 8 Each stands for 2 votes In a pictograph the key symbol can stand for 1 2 3 or any number of data values 6
You can answer questions about students vegetable preferences using the data in the pictograph Which was the most popular vegetable Corn because that choice has the most dots How many students chose peppers 2 students because 1 dot means that 2 students chose peppers How many more students chose carrots than peppers 6 more students 8 chose carrots and 2 chose peppers 8 2 6 7
