Learning Paths

Thirty students write down how long their journey to school takes. A list of thirty numbers says very little. A picture of the list says a lot: where most values sit, how far they spread, and whether a few lie far away. In this chapter you draw histograms and box plots, read the shape of a distribution, find outliers with a clear rule, and measure spread with the standard deviation. You also learn to compare a value with its group through a z-score. Small Python programs do the counting, so you can spend your time on what the numbers mean.

StemPy Lab

A bus is late on some days and on time on others. A coin lands heads five times in a row. A game at a fair costs a coin to play. How likely is each thing, and what happens in the long run? This chapter finds probabilities from data and from equal chances, and checks every rule with a simulation. You will add and multiply chances, draw probability trees, read two-way tables and work out whether a game is fair. The Python is short and explained line by line.

StemPy Lab

Do students who practise more type faster? Is a mountain town cooler than a town by the sea? When we measure two things about each person or place, a scatter plot shows how they move together. This chapter puts a number on that pattern, fits the line that predicts one measurement from the other, and then asks the hard question: does one thing really cause the other? Every idea starts with a made-up data set or a simulation, and short Python programs do the arithmetic. It suits a curious student from Class 9 onwards and any adult who reads graphs in the news.

StemPy Lab

Collect facts, sort them into tables, and show them in graphs that are easy to read.

StemPy Lab