What Is It?
Data analysis is the process of interpreting the meaning of the data we have collected, organized, and displayed in the form of a table, bar chart, line graph, or other representation. The process involves looking for patterns—similarities, disparities, trends, and other relationships—and thinking about what these patterns might mean.
When analyzing data, ask students questions such as:
What pattern do you see?
What does this graph tell you?
Who could use this data? How could they use it?
Why is this data shown in a line graph?
The process of collecting, organizing, and analyzing data is not always a simple, sequential process; sometimes a preliminary analysis of a data set may prompt us to look at the data in another way, or even to go back and collect additional data to test an emerging hypothesis. For example, students could survey their classmates on how they are transported to school (such as by car, by bus, by foot, or another way), and then display the data in a circle graph.
After analyzing the data in this graph, students might look at the data in a different way. Students might be interested in finding out more about people who are transported to school by car. Why do they ride in a car to school? Are they on a bus route? Do they carpool with other students? Are they close enough to school to walk, but choose to ride? Is the neighborhood between home and school too dangerous to walk through? Do the people who walk sometimes ride in a car, also? They might discover that most students in the "other" category ride their bikes to school, and decide to create an additional category.