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Working with the Large Data Sets in A level Mathematics

This page contains information on:

Downloading the large data sets

Ideas for using the Large Data Sets to teach statistics in A level Mathematics

The Integral online resources contain lessons based on the Large Data Sets for the AQA, Edexcel, MEI and OCR specifications. The lessons include:

  • PowerPoint presentations
  • Student worksheets
  • Teacher notes and solutions

Using Desmos for the large data sets

The Advanced Mathematics Support Programme (AMSP) has produced workbooks that show how to use Desmos to investigate the large data sets:

Help videos: using Excel and GeoGebra for statistics

These short videos demonstrate a range of useful techniques for using Excel and GeoGebra for statistics in GCSE and A level Mathematics, including the large data sets. Most of the videos are less than 5 minutes in length. The data sets used in the videos are not related to any exam specification; they have been chosen to illustrate the techniques.

Copying and filtering

These videos use the Car fuel and emissions data set.

Cleaning data, dealing with missing data

These videos use the World bank data set.

Working with charts

These videos use the data set OECD.stat (2017) Municipal waste, generation and treatment April 2017.

Scatter diagrams, trend lines and correlation

These videos use the Car fuel and emissions data set.

Drawing histograms and box plots

These videos use the Rain gauge data set (this data set is no longer available online).

Grouping data and working with grouped data

These videos use the Minimum wage data set.

Histograms from grouped data; cumulative frequency / percentage charts

These videos use the Japan census data set (this data set is no longer available online).

Random sampling

These videos use the Car fuel and emissions data set.

Probability calculations

MEI Introduction to Data Science short course

MEI has developed a free course to introduce A level Mathematics students to Data Science. The course is freely available on this site: Introduction to Data Science Short Course.

The course consists of 8 lessons of short videos and programming tasks (in Python). It is designed to be studied independently and can be completed in the summer term of year 12 or over the summer break between years 12 and 13.

The materials feature:

  • Activities that use the A level Large Data Sets as a starting point. Throughout the resources there are examples using the data sets for each specification: AQA, Edexcel, OCR, and OCR(MEI).
  • An introduction to the use of Python for exploring data (no prior knowledge of programming in Python is expected from students or teachers).
  • Meet a Data Scientist videos featuring practising data scientists talking about their work.