Back to search results
ReSolve: What's In A Name

Teacher guide ReSolve: What's In A Name

TLF ID M025315

This sequence of two lessons examines trends in the names of students in the class, as well as trends in popular names from 2017 and 1957. Students explore data associated with these names and decide whether the mean, median or mode might be a suitable measure of central tendency. They develop their skills with spreadsheets by carrying out statistical calculations. Each lesson is outlined in detail including curriculum links, vocabulary, materials needed, discussion points, internet resources and spreadsheets of historical name data. This sequence is part of the reSolve: Maths by Inquiry program.

View resource


Educational details

Educational value
  • This resource is extremely valuable for the year 7 mathematics content descriptions about calculating mean, median, mode and range for sets of data and interpreting these statistics in context. Students explore the best measure of central tendency for authentic sets of data about names and interpret their own name data within this context by creating their own 'average' names.
  • The resource is of significant value for supporting the Numeracy general capability. The lesson provides multiple opportunities for students to collect, compare, describe and interpret data, including historical data from online sources and spreadsheets.
  • This resource is also of pedagogical value as it supports teachers in building an inquiry-focused learning environment with authentic application of mathematical skills and understandings. The unit aims to develop content knowledge as well as assisting students to understand the process of inquiry.
Year level

7

Topics Stem and leaf plots Data representation Central tendency Personal names Distributions (Statistics) Range (Statistics) Outliers Justification (Reasoning)
Learning area
  • Mathematics

Other details

Contributors
  • Contributor
  • Name: Education Services Australia
  • Organization: Education Services Australia
  • Description: Data manager
  • Address: VIC, AUSTRALIA
  • URL: http://www.esa.edu.au/
  • Copyright Holder
  • Name: Australian Government Department of Education and Training
  • Organization: Australian Government Department of Education and Training
  • Publisher
  • Name: Australian Academy of Science
  • Organization: Australian Academy of Science
  • Description: Publisher
  • URL: https://www.science.org.au/
  • Resource metadata contributed by
  • Name: Education Services Australia Ltd
  • Organisation: Education Services Australia Ltd
  • Address: AUSTRALIA
  • URL: www.esa.edu.au
Access profile
  • Unknown
Learning Resource Type
  • Online
Rights
  • © Australian Government Department of Education and Training 2017. Unless otherwise indicated, this material may be used in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.