A prize for being average

Jokerad shares a worksheet to engage students with the concept of averages.

What is it?

A grid displaying the overall exam results of five young people. In groups, pupils must choose who should win a prize by analysing the results to find their mean, median, mode and range. Each group then has to campaign for its choice by arguing from the mathematical evidence.

Why is it useful?

One area of maths where many pupils seem to struggle is averages. It’s not just a case of how we work out the mean, median and mode, but why we do it. When is the median better to use than the mean? How does the range come into things? This worksheet’s reward context will interest pupils and encourage discussions about the merits of the various measures so that their understanding of averages should increase significantly.

Craig Barton, TES maths adviser

What else?

Get students foraging for averages with a mean, mode and median treasure hunt from laura.reeshughes.

Analyse data with an Olympic theme and find out the average performance level of Team GB in the Games over the past 60 years with Chris1988‘s topical lesson.