Statistics - Stage 3
Statistics Short Problems - Age 11-14
A collection of short Stage 3 problems on statistics.
How Would You Score It?
Invent a scoring system for a 'guess the weight' competition.
About Average
Can you find sets of numbers which satisfy each of our mean, median, mode and range conditions?
Substitution Cipher
Find the frequency distribution for ordinary English, and use it to help you crack the code.
Olympic Records
Can you deduce which Olympic athletics events are represented by the graphs?
In the Bag
Can you guess the colours of the 10 marbles in the bag? Can you develop an effective strategy for reaching 1000 points in the least number of rounds?
Half a Minute
Anna, Ben and Charlie have been estimating 30 seconds. Who is the best?
Reaction Timer
This problem offers you two ways to test reactions - use them to investigate your ideas about speeds of reaction.
M, M and M
If you are given the mean, median and mode of five positive whole numbers, can you find the numbers?
Who's the Best?
Which countries have the most naturally athletic populations?
Unequal Averages
Play around with sets of five numbers and see what you can discover about different types of average...
What's the Weather Like?
With access to weather station data, what interesting questions can you investigate?
Estimating Time
How well can you estimate 10 seconds? Investigate with our timing tool.
Litov's Mean Value Theorem
Start with two numbers and generate a sequence where the next number is the mean of the last two numbers...
Statistical Shorts
Can you decide whether these short statistical statements are always, sometimes or never true?
Wipeout
Can you do a little mathematical detective work to figure out which number has been wiped out?
Searching for Mean(ing)
If you have a large supply of 3kg and 8kg weights, how many of each would you need for the average (mean) of the weights to be 6kg?
Tree Tops
Can you make sense of information about trees in order to maximise the profits of a forestry company?
You may also be interested in this collection of activities from the STEM Learning website, that complement the NRICH activities above.