Planning & Types of Data (Edexcel GCSE Statistics: Higher): Exam Questions

Mr Powell is the Headteacher of a school with 800 students.

He wants to find out about how students at his school use revision websites to help them with their studies.

He is going to write a plan for his enquiry.

Write down one thing Mr Powell should include in his plan for each of

• data collection

• choice of sampling method

• a diagram to represent the data collected.

Explain why each of the things you have written down is appropriate.

A restaurant owner wants to get feedback on a new dish that they introduced.

There were 200 customers who tried the dish.

The owner plans to give a questionnaire to a sample of 30 of these customers.

One of the questions on the questionnaire is:

To what extent do you agree with the statement, the dish was delicious?

Use an integer scale from 0 to 5, where 0 means I strongly disagree and 5 means I strongly agree.

Circle the word from the list that best describes the type of data that this question collects.

Emily read a report that said that these days more people prefer shopping online than shopping in physical shops.

She decided to investigate how the 15,000 students at her university prefer to do their shopping.

Emily wrote the following as a hypothesis:

Do more students prefer shopping online than in physical shops?

Comment on whether it is appropriate to use this as a hypothesis.

Emily's friend Mira is at a different university and plans to carry out a similar investigation.

Emily and Mira agree to use a questionnaire and question students in their university's cafeterias. They then plan to compare their results.

Discuss two things that Emily and Mira should have considered in planning their investigations to help improve the reliability and validity of their comparisons.

Obi found the weight, in grams, of each of 50 plants.

Circle the two words from the list of seven words below that best describe the data Obi found.

Yuki investigates the heights of 200 people at a sports event. The shortest person at the event is 150 cm tall, and the tallest person is 200 cm tall.

Yuki decides to use a grouped frequency table to show her results.

(i) Give two advantages of using grouped data rather than raw data.

[2]

(ii) Give one disadvantage of using grouped data rather than raw data.

[1]

Yuki is considering using one of the two possible frequency tables, Table A or Table B, shown below.

Table A

Table B

Yuki claims that Table A gives more detail than Table B about her results.

Assess whether or not Yuki's claim is appropriate.

Neil is investigating the effect of sugar on memory retention.

Here is what Neil has written down for his hypothesis and how he plans to collect, process, and present his data.

Hypothesis

• Does sugar improve memory retention?

Data collection

• Pre-test the memory retention test

• Each person to complete the memory test, then eat a sugary snack, wait a while, and then complete the memory test a second time

• Each person to record their memory retention scores in a spreadsheet

Processing and presenting data

• Look for outliers in the data and remove them if found

• Calculate the median and quartiles

• Draw a box plot for the memory retention scores after sugar has been consumed

Discuss whether Neil's hypothesis and his plans for collecting, processing, and presenting data are appropriate.

Ali is going to investigate the amount of time students spend studying on weekdays.

She is going to write a plan for this investigation.

Her hypothesis is

"The amount of time that students in higher year groups spend studying is greater than the amount of time that students in lower year groups spend studying."

Write down three other things she should include in her plan.

Explain why each of these things is appropriate.

You must refer to more than one stage of the statistical enquiry cycle.

A coffee shop has a loyalty program with 350 regular customers.

The shop manager wants to gather information about the amount of money spent by each loyalty program member on each visit to the coffee shop.

The manager decides on the following plan:

• Record the amount of money spent by each of the first 40 customers who visit the coffee shop on a Saturday morning.

• Draw a pie chart for the amounts of money spent.

• Find the mean of the amounts of money spent.

Discuss whether the manager’s plan is likely to be effective.

You should comment on both the collection of data and on the analysis of results.

Where appropriate, you should suggest improvements to the plan.