How do we organize data in a way that is meaningful?

Let’s look at the data in this table.

The left column shows the weeks…

…and the right column shows the number of pairs of shoes sold.

It will be easier to work with the data if we reorder it from smallest to largest.

Let’s review some words that we use to describe data.

The minimum, or min…

…is the smallest value in the set. Here, the minimum is thirty-one.

The maximum, or max…

…is the largest value in the set. Here, the maximum is fifty-seven.

The range is the difference between the maximum and minimum.

Here, the range is fifty-seven…

…minus thirty-one…

…or twenty-six.

The mode…

…is the number that appears the most …is the number that appears the most. In this set of data, the mode is thirty-nine.

Finally, we look at the mean. The mean is the average of the data.

To find the mean, we divide the total pairs of shoes, four hundred fourteen…

…by the number of weeks, nine.

The quotient is forty-six.

This tells us that the average, or mean, is forty-six pairs of shoes per week.

It’s important to remember that mean, mode, and range tell us different things about a set of data.