3.3 How many people in a particular province are HIV positive?
3.4 How does the prison population of one province compare with that of another province?
3.5 When one looks at the number of women in our parliament, how does that compare with the situation in other democratic countries?
3.6 What is the distribution of wealth in the world – in other words, what percentage of the world’s population owns, say, half of the world’s wealth?
ACTIVITY 2
To learn about using various methods for gathering data
[LO 2.2, 5.2]
In the research about the cell phones and sport, it was easy to get information. But sometimes one has to work a little harder.
1 When one has to
count something (for example, the number of lefthanders in the school), the easiest way is to use a tally table
Below is a tally table for filling in information about the ages and sex (male or female) of you and your siblings (brothers and sisters). For each sister, you make a little line (a tally) in the “sisters” row under the appropriate age. For each brother you do the same in the “brothers” row. Don’t forget yourself! Every learner in the class must do the same. Every time you have to add a fifth tally, you put it across the four others – this makes it easier to add all the tallies at the end to get the totals for each age. The first tally table shows an imaginary e
x ample – you will use the second one for your class.
Ages
<1
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
>24
Sisters
Brothers
Total sisters
Total brothers
The numbers in the bottom two rows give the
frequency of the occurrence of the different ages. A frequency table shows the
frequency distribution of the characteristic being studied.
You can see that the tables in the cell phone and sport examples are also frequency tables.
2
Questionnaires are used when the information to be gathered is more complicated than can be entered on a tally table
Someone might stop you in a shopping centre and
interview you about your toothpaste and flossing habits.
The questionnaire form might have questions like:
Do you use toothpaste never, once, twice or more than two times a day?
Do you buy a new toothbrush every week, every month or every year?
Do you floss your teeth regularly or only when you think you have food stuck in your teeth?
Do you prefer flavoured toothpaste?
Do you like coloured toothpaste?
Do you go the dentist regularly or only when necessary?
How many fillings have you had?
Have you had any teeth extracted?
Form small groups and briefly discuss some of the possible reasons why someone might want this information.
Many questionnaires are printed in newspapers and magazines. Sometimes they are just for fun, and you can analyse them and read the results right away. But some can be serious, and you might be asked to post them back. Often, to encourage people to participate, a prize or reward might be offered! Many people hate filling in questionnaires, and they have to be persuaded – but for others it is great fun and they don’t mind being helpful.
3 Another way of getting information is to do an experiment.
