A question and three files
A made-up school library starts a new loans app. The head teacher asks one thing: "Will it get more students reading?"
You are handed three files. One has loans, one has comments, and one has the old paper cards. What do you do first? Not open a file.
Key words
| Word | What it means | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Discover | Find out what the problem really is and why it matters. | Talk to the head teacher |
| Investigate | Look closely at the data to see if it can help. | Read the first ten rows |
| Relevance | How well the data helps to answer the question. | Loan dates help. Shoe sizes do not |
| Characteristics | What the data is like: its fields, format, age and accuracy. | Dates written the same way |
| Quantitative data | Data in numbers that you can count or measure. | Days a book was out |
| Qualitative data | Data in words, opinions or descriptions. | A comment about the app |
| Availability | Whether you can get the data, and how much of it there is. | Only two terms of loans exist |
| Stakeholder | A person who cares about the result. | The head teacher or the librarian |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
By the end of this lesson
Note
I can describe the Understanding stage of a data project: discover the problem, then check the relevance, characteristics, type and size of the data.
Starter: what you already know
Have a go
Starter: what you already know
3 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.
Stage one is Understanding
A data project has stages. The first is Understanding. You learn the problem before you touch the numbers.
It has two jobs. Discover the problem. Then investigate the data: how relevant it is, what it is like, which type it is and how much there is.
Check: the two jobs
Have a go
Check: the two jobs
3 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.