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10 Processing and presenting data

If you are given the ages of seven students, you can work out the
mean, the median and the mode.

Can you do it the other way round?
Seven students have a mean age of 12 years, a median of 13 and a
mode of 14.
What could the ages be? Is there more than one answer?

!e statistic you choose to represent a set of data
is important.
In the Olympics a medal table is produced.
Usually countries are ranked according to the number of
gold medals they win.

!e "rst table below shows the top eight countries in the
2012 Olympics.
In the USA they usually use a table based on the total
number of medals. !e results are in the second table

below.

Country Gold medals Country Total medals

USA 46 USA 104

China 38 China 88

UK 29 Russia 82

Russia 24 UK 65

South Korea 13 Germany 44

Germany 11 Japan 38

France 11 Australia 35

Italy 8 France 34

You can see that the results are di#erent.
Which do you think is the better way to compare countries?
In this unit you will review and extend what you have already learnt about processing and
presenting data.

10 Processing and presenting data 97