Mathematics in

the Modern
World
Course Material in Mathematics

Jenette C. Pangilinan
Course Instructor
2 MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD • NU LAGUNA

MATHEMATICS AS A
TOOL 5
LEARNING OUTCOMES

Here’s what I will teach you in this course material:

LESSON OUTLINE
• Apply statistics in problem solving and sound reasoning using sampling,
• Sampling, tables, graphs, measures and statistical techniques.
Frequency
Unit Outline
Distributions • Differentiate the measures of Central Tendency
and Graphs
• Measures of • Use technology for problem solving in statistics.
Central
Tendency

RESOURCES NEEDED
For this lesson, you would need the following resources:

• Textbook:

• Video:

• Website:
MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD • NU 3
LAGUNA

PRE-TEST
Before you start, try answering the following:

I. Determine whether the following variables are (a.) qualitative or quantitative and if it is
quantitative identify if it is (b.) discrete or continuous.
1.Gender
2.Temperature
3.Number of days during the past week that a college student aged 21 years or
older has had at least one drink
4.Zip code
5. Class rank
6. Length of hair of female students.
7. The students IQ score is 122.
8. The number of students who passed the chemistry class is 10.
9. The number of children per family is 5.
10. The boy’s weight is 120.5.

II. For each of the following variables, determine the level of measurement.
1.Gender
2. Room Temperature
3. Percentile rank in NSAT
4. Weights of students in a first-year course
5. Results of a nationally administered test.
4 MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD • NU LAGUNA

PRE-ACTIVITY

Direction: Try answering the questions below by writing your ideas

under the first column What I Know. You may write key words or
phrases that you think are related to the questions.

What I Know Chart

What I Know Questions What I Learned
1. Why study statistics?
2. What is the difference
between descriptive statistics
and inferential statistics?
3. What is the difference
between statistic and
parameter?
 MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD • NU 5
LAGUNA

Statistics and Data

There are many classifications of data. Different kinds of data are
collected, analyzed, and interpreted. Being able to differentiate them is the
CONTENT AND first thing that must be considered when organizing data.

DISCUSSION
Basic Terms and Definitions

In statistics, a sample is a subset of the population that is being studied, while

population is defined as the entire group of individuals being studied. On the
other hand, a variable refers to the characteristics of the individuals within
the population.

There are two types of variables, namely, qualitative or categorical

variables and quantitative variables.
Key Point
Qualitative or categorical variables are those variables that allow for
classification of individuals based on some attribute or characteristic.
Statistics is the study of
Examples are eye color, ethnicity, and brand of ice cream.
data which are often
relevance to our daily lives.
Quantitative variables are those that provide numerical measures of
Data is everywhere for individuals. Examples are height, age, and number of children. Also,
which you can observe and quantitative variables can be classified as discrete or continuous.
measure. Discrete variable is obtained through counting, examples are number of
With the advancement of children, number of males and females in class. Continuous variable is
technology, data can be obtained by measuring. Examples are density, height, weight.
accessed anywhere and by
Classification of variables also includes levels of measurement, which are
anyone. When data is
the following:
correct, valid analysis and
a. Nominal level of measurement- if the values of the variable name,
interpretation can be
label, or categorize. In addition, the naming scheme does not allow
generated to produce for the values of the variable to be arranged in ranked or specific
valuable information. order. Examples are books in the library, courses in college.
b. Ordinal level of measurement- if it has the properties of the nominal
level of measurement and the naming scheme allows for the values
of the variable to be arranged in a ranked or specific order. Examples
are winners in a science quiz bee (1st, 2nd, 3rd, ...), levels of anxiety.
c. Interval level of measurement - if it has the properties of the ordinal
level of measurement and the differences in the values of the variable
have meaning. A value of zero in the interval level of measurement
DOES NOT mean the ABSENCE of the quantity. Arithmetic
operations such as addition and subtraction can be performed on
values of the variable. Examples are aptitude scores from 80 to 90,
0℃, results of NSAT.
d. Ratio level of measurement- does not only include those
characteristics of interval level of measurement but also starts at the
value zero. It is the highest level of measurement.
 6 MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD • NU LAGUNA

Examples of ratio level of measurement are weight, the time it takes to do math project and the number of
absences of students in a class.

SAMPLING, FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION AND GRAPHS

Sampling is the method of selecting the sample from a given population. Data gathered from the samples
can be made more interesting and organized by presenting them in the form of graphs and tables.

A frequency distribution table is a device for organizing and presenting grouped data. When the set of data
contains more than 30 cases, a frequency distribution table maybe constructed to make the task more
manageable and to save time in calculating different statistics.

Example 1:
To estimate the new download times its subscribers
will experience, the ISP surveyed 1000 of its
subscribers to determine the time required for each
subscriber to download a particular file from an
Internet site. The results of that survey are
summarized in Table 1.

Table 1

Table 1 shows how often (frequently) certain events occurred. Each interval, 0–5, 5–10, and so on, is called
a class. This distribution has 12 classes. For the 10–15 class, 10 is the lower-class boundary and 15 is the
upper class boundary. Any data value that lies on a common boundary is assigned to the higher class.
MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD • NU 7
LAGUNA
The graph of the frequency distribution is called a
histogram. A histogram provides a pictorial view of
how the data are distributed. In Figure 1, the height of
each bar of the histogram indicates how many
subscribers experienced the download times shown by
the class on the base of the bar.

Fig.1

Example 2:
Examine the distribution in Table 2 below. It shows the percent of subscribers that are in each class, as
opposed to the frequency distribution in Table 1, which shows the number of customers in each class. The
type of frequency distribution that lists the percent of data in each class is called a relative frequency
distribution. The relative frequency histogram in Figure 2 was drawn by using the data in the relative
frequency distribution. It shows the percent of subscribers along its vertical axis.

Table 2

Fig. 2

* Take note that one advantage of using a relative frequency distribution instead of a grouped frequency
distribution is that there is a direct correspondence between the percent values of the relative frequency
distribution and probabilities. For instance, in the relative frequency distribution in Table 2, the percent of
the data that lies between 35 and 40 s is 14.9%. Thus, if a subscriber is chosen at random, the probability
that the subscriber will require at least 35 seconds but less than 40 seconds to download the music file is
0.149.
8 MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD • NU LAGUNA

Example 3: Use the relative frequency distribution in Table 13.8 to determine the:
a. percent of subscribers who required at least 25 seconds to download the file.
b. probability that a subscriber chosen at random will require at least 5 seconds but less than 20 seconds to
download the file.
.
Solution:
a. The percent of data in all the classes with a lower boundary of
25 seconds or more is the sum of the percent printed in red in
Table 3. Thus, the percent of subscribers who required at
least 25 seconds to download the file is 69.1%.
b. The percent of data in all the classes with a lower boundary of
at least 5 seconds and an upper boundary of 20 seconds or less
is the sum of the percent printed in blue in Table 3. Thus, the
percent of subscribers who required at least 5 seconds but less
than 20 seconds to download the file is 15.2%. The probability
that a subscriber chosen at random will require at least 5 but
less than 20 s to download the fi le is 0.152.
Table 3
Other ways of organizing and presenting data aside from frequency distribution table and histogram are Bar
Chart and Pie Charts, Stem-and- leaf plot, and Box-and – whisker plot.

Bar Charts and Pie Chart are mostly used when presenting nominal data. See example below:

Fig. 3 Fig.4
Frequency Frequency
40
30 36%
20 64%
10
0
Male Female Male Female

Bar Chart in Fig.3 is used in describing the frequency. It shows that there are more males than females. On
the other hand, Pie chart in Fig.4 are divided into sections to show relative frequency. This shows that
males have a higher percentage (64%) than female (34%).

Stem-and-leaf plot is another visual representation of quantitative data, in which the data is divided into
two parts: “stem” and “leaf”. It is used when the distribution is symmetric. The stem is the first digit or
digits while the leaf is the last digit of a value.

Example: Consider the following history test scores

65, 72, 96, 86, 43, 61, 75, 86, 49, 68, 98, 74, 84, 78, 85, 75, 86, 73
MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD • NU 9
LAGUNA

Box-and-whisker Plot (sometimes called Box plot) is also a graphical representation of quantitative data.
A box-and-whisker plot shows the median, the first and third quartiles, and the minimum and maximum
values of a data set. See the figure 5.

Fig.5

Example:
Construct a box-and-whisker plot of the given data: 𝑄1 = 39, 𝑄2 = 43, 𝑄3 = 51.5, 𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑚𝑢𝑚 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒 =
26, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑚𝑎𝑥𝑖𝑚𝑢𝑚 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒 = 73
 10 MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD • NU LAGUNA

MEASURES OF CENTRAL TENDENCY

One of the most important uses of statistics is finding the central value of a certain set of data. It summarizes
large amounts of data into a single value to help in making meaningful decisions. These are also used to
compare sets of data.

A measure of central tendency is a single value that describes the center of a distribution. The most common
measures of central tendency are mean, median and mode.

MEAN

The Arithmetic Mean of a set of numbers is often referred to as simply the Mean. To find the mean for a
set of data, find the sum of the data values and divide by the number of data values.

𝟒𝟑,𝟕𝟓𝟎+𝟑𝟗,𝟓𝟎𝟎+𝟑𝟖,𝟎𝟎𝟎+𝟒𝟏,𝟐𝟓𝟎+𝟒𝟒,𝟎𝟎𝟎 206,500
Example 1: Mean = = = 41,300
𝟓 5

➢ The mean of n numbers is the sum of the numbers divided by n.

∑𝒙
Formula: mean =
𝒏

Statisticians often collect data from small portions of a large group in order to determine information
about the group. In such situations the entire group under consideration is known as the population, and
̅
any subset of the population is called a sample. It is traditional to denote the mean of a sample by 𝑿
(which is read as “x bar”) and to denote the mean of a population by the Greek letter 𝝁 (lowercase mu).

Example 2: Six friends in a biology class of 20 students received test grades of 92, 84, 65, 76, 88, and 90

∑𝒙 𝟗𝟐+𝟖𝟒+𝟔𝟓+𝟕𝟔+𝟖𝟖+𝟗𝟎 𝟒𝟗𝟓
Solution: mean =
𝒏
= 𝟔
= 𝟔
= 𝟖𝟐. 𝟓

WEIGHTED MEAN

A value called the weighted mean is often used when some data values are more important than others.
Formula:
∑(𝒙𝒘)
𝒘𝒆𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒎𝒆𝒂𝒏 = ∑
𝒘

where ∑(𝑥𝑤) is the sum of the products formed by multiplying each number by its assigned weight, and
∑ 𝑤 is the sum of all the weights.

Example 3:
A certain college student enrolled in 6 subjects obtain the following grades and its corresponding units,
compute his weighted mean grade. See Table 4
MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD • NU 11
LAGUNA

No. of Units
Table 4
Subject (weight) w Grade (x) wx
Filipino 1 3 2.0 6
English 1 3 3.0 9
Science 1 5 1.25 6.25
P.E. 1 1 3.0 3
NSTP 2 2.5 5
Math 1 3 2.5 7.5
∑ 𝑤 = 17 ∑ 𝑥𝑤 = 36.75

Solution:
∑(𝒙𝒘) 𝟑𝟔.𝟕𝟓
𝒘𝒆𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒎𝒆𝒂𝒏 = ∑𝒘
= = 𝟐. 𝟏𝟔
𝟏𝟕

Mean for Large number of data (Mean of data in a frequency distribution)

A large collection of raw data may not provide much pertinent information that can be readily observed. A
frequency distribution, which is a table that lists observed events and the frequency of occurrence of each
observed event, is often used to organize raw data. For instance, consider the following table,

Table 5 Frequency Distribution Table of the Numbers of Laptop Computers per Household
Frequency
Number of Number of (fx)
laptop households,
computers, ( x ) ( f ), with laptop
computers
0 5 0
1 12 12
2 14 28
3 3 9
4 2 8
5 3 15
6 0 0
7 1 7
∑ 𝑓 = 40 ∑ 𝑓𝑥 = 79

Solution:
∑ 𝒇𝒙 𝟕𝟗
Mean = ∑ = = 𝟏. 𝟗𝟕𝟓
𝒇 𝟒𝟎
Thus, the mean number of laptop computers per household is 1.975  1.98.

MEDIAN

The median is the middle value when the data is in ascending or descending order. If there is an
even number of observations, get the mean of the two middle most values.
12 MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD • NU LAGUNA

Example 4: Find the median for the data in the following lists.
a. 4, 8, 1, 14, 9, 21, 12 b. 46, 23, 92, 89, 77, 108

Solution:
a. The list 4, 8, 1, 14, 9, 21, 12 contains 7 numbers. The median of a list with an odd
number of numbers is found by ranking the numbers and finding the middle number.
Ranking the numbers from smallest to largest gives 1, 4, 8, 9, 12, 14, 21. The middle number is 9. Thus 9
is the median.

b. The list 46, 23, 92, 89, 77, 108 contains 6 numbers. The median of a list of data with
an even number of numbers is found by ranking the numbers and computing the mean of the two middle
numbers. Ranking the numbers from smallest to largest gives
23, 46, 77, 89, 92, 108. The two middle numbers are 77 and 89. The mean of 77 and 89 is 83. Thus 83 is
the median of the data.

MODE

The mode of a list of numbers is the number that occurs most frequently.

Example 5: Find the mode for the data in the following lists.
a. 18, 15, 21, 16, 15, 14, 15, 21 b. 2, 5, 8, 9, 11, 4, 7, 23

Solution:
a. In the list 18, 15, 21, 16, 15, 14, 15, 21, the number 15 occurs more often than the
other numbers. Thus, 15 is the mode.

b. Each number in the list 2, 5, 8, 9, 11, 4, 7, 23 occurs only once. Because no number
occurs more often than the others, there is no mode.
 MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD • NU 13
LAGUNA

MEASURES OF CENTRAL TENDENCY WITH TECHNOLOGY

Using spreadsheets makes calculation of the measures of Central Tendency easier. The following screen
shots show Microsoft Excel’s statistical formulas:

Answer: Mean = 17.375

Answer: Median = 17

Answer: Mode = 13
14 MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD • NU LAGUNA

MATH MATTERS
For enrichment, read the problem below.

Average Rate for a Round Trip

CRITICAL THINKING

CRITICAL THINKING
A student listed 10 of his classmates’ score in
Statistics test.

34, 42, 27, 34, 45, 32, 31, 44, 33, 31

a. Calculate the mean, median and mode.

b. If 45 was really 34 will the mean change?
Will the median change? Will the mode
change? Explain your answer.
 MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD • NU 15
LAGUNA

ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY
Direction: Analyze the relative frequency distribution table below. Then, answer the
following questions:

a. What percent of subscribers require less than 25 seconds to download a file?

Explain your answer.
b. What is the probability that a subscriber chosen at random will require at least 10
seconds but less than 30 seconds to download a file? Explain your answer.

Answer: a. _____________________________________________
b.______________________________________________
16 MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD • NU LAGUNA

POSTTEST
I. Identify whether the following variables are qualitative or quantitative. If it is
quantitative, determine if it is discrete or continuous.

1. Age of college freshmen in Letran.

Answer: ________________________________
2. The number of cars that arrive at a McDonald’s drive–through between 12:00PM
and 1:00PM.
Answer: ________________________________
3. The prevalent skin color of Filipinos is known.
Answer: ________________________________
4. The freshmen college students came from either public or private schools.
Answer: ________________________________
5. The boy’s weight is 120.5.
Answer: ________________________________

II. Identify which level of measurement is each item.

Level of Measurement

1. Name __________________
2. Age __________________
3. Civil Status __________________
4. Weight (in kg) __________________
5. Height __________________

III. Answer the following problem:

a. The heights of Sydney, Ada, and Ria were 155cm, 158cm and 161cm, respectively.
What is the height of Teresa if the mean of all the four girls is 158cm? Explain
your answer.

Answer: _________________________________________________________
 MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD • NU 17
LAGUNA

ONLINE RESOURCES

VIDEO:
Measures of Central Tendency using MS Excel: https://youtu.be/-_6yM23kPHc

BOOK SECTION:

REFERENCES

Auffman, R., Lockwood, J., Nation, R., Clegg, D. (2018) Mathematical Excursions (4th ed).
Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning
Auffman, R., Lockwood, J., Nation, R., Clegg, D. (2013) Mathematical Excursions (3rd ed).
Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning