Can you help me with this maths problem?

[MathsMagpie]

Or explain where to start?

I have a Maths degree so hopefully can be trusted with Year 8 Maths- the answer is definitely 0. There's obviously a mistake on the website- it's very common for the right answer to come up as wrong on websites like this because the person who programmed it got the answer wrong themselves.

I thought 0, interested in what’s happened!

It's a pictogram- have you never seen one before?

It depends on what network the phones were on, and whether they were using 4G or 5G. But I'd guess the frequency was around 2.3GHz.

Of course it is zero，but I suspect the question contains a mistake

Yes, I have. I am a maths teacher. But there are better and worse ways of showing data and this is a terrible one.

Maths certainly wasn't taught great when my dc was at school. I am an accountant. I wouldn't give people questions that make no sense either. But someone who teaches Y8 pupils thought it was a good idea.

Frequency is the number of times an event happens.

e.g.

Number of letters delivered / Number of houses who get that number of letters

0 letters received by 5 houses. So the frequency is 5
1 letter received by 2 houses
2 letters by 5 houses
3 letters to 1 houses

You can work out the total number of houses - 5 + 2 + 5 + 1 = 13
Total number of letters = 0 + 2 + 10 + 3 = 18

Frequency rate = 18/13 = 1.38 letters per house

That's Year 8 maths.

And no one got 12 letters!

The median group was 1 letters (as that's the middle if you put the raw data in a straight line)

0,0,0,0,0,1,1,2,2,2,2,2,3

(I am using letters as I can't read the actual problem!)

4 texts by 9 people = 36 (Frequency is 9)
5 by 10 = 50
6 by 8 = 48
7 by 3 = 21
8 by 10 = 80

So there were 40 people and they sent 235 texts

Rate / Mean is 5.875 texts per person

And no one sent 12 texts.

Your example calculates the mean, which is in the curriculum. "Frequency rate" isn't.

Love it
Use the key to add up shapes and divide by 24 for average frequency per hour
That's the most you can do with the data

It calculates the rate (and also the mean in this case)

It tells you how many letters are delivered per person.
Or how many texts are sent per person

In this case, it's also the mean

When it asks for the mean, it is asking for the average number of letters / texts each person sends.

What do you think the mean "means" in this case?

How do you think it differs from the rate?

When you get a mean pay of £12 (If you add up what everyone earns and divide by how many people), you get a pay per person

When you add up how many accidents there are and divide by how many people there are, you get an accident frequency rate (per person)

This is year 8 maths were talking about though, where "mean" would be the term used instead of frequency rate or average or any other term we'd use in real life.

The question isn't asking about frequency rate, and that wouldn't be the term we'd use to teach the mean i.e. in this case the total number of texts divided by the total frequency.

Anyway, I still maintain that Dr Frost Maths is broken.

I also think the website is broken. My DD comes home with MyMaths homework which is a similar format (we haven't had obvious errors like this though). I hate it and think it's very lazy homework - no way of checking what the child has / hasn't understood, and no way to see that the child has got 95% of the way there before making a mistake.

You mean the total number of texts divided by the number of people altogether.

Frequency is used though.
Rate is used (especially in science - rate of change, gradients etc)
It also doesn't use frequency rate in the question.

It's a bizarre question - you can work out the total number of texts, the rate per person and the rate per hour

(Also - it uses pictograms which is very simplistic so you wouldn't expect a complex question if it uses pictograms)

You mean the total number of texts divided by the number of people altogether

Yes, but in this case and in KS3 and KS4 maths,the frequency is the total number of pupils. So 235/40 would be referred to as the value of the mean, and we wouldn't call it the frequency rate.

I know.

But it is useful to understand what it "means" - so the number of texts per person i.e. the rate that texts are sent

Knowing the word "rate" and what it means - and also understanding what the mean means is useful

I wouldn't use "frequency rate" but I would use "rate" by itself - as understanding rate (of change, per person, per hour) is very useful. And a life skill e.g inflation as the rate prices are increasing at

In fact - understanding the word "per" is very useful in maths, science and life

No point being able to calculate something if you don't understand what it actually means. .

I do get you are trying to associate the answer to a meaning in the context of the question. In this case however, you are being asked for the frequency for 12 texts, nothing more, nothing less.

However, there isn't a row for 12 texts, so we can't even begin to calculate the frequency by multiplying the number of circles by 4 like we would for the others.

The question is useless.

I was just discussing what could be calculated and I calculated the mean (which in this case is also the rate of texts sent per person)

I think most of us agree that the question is probably a dud.

The homework is about interpreting pictograms, which is about right for year 8 or even foundation GCSE.

Being a maths teacher myself, I have my own Dr Frost account, and have just logged in for the first time in ages. Here is an example of the same exercise with the explanation of the right answer.

Pictograms are on the primary school curriculum

This is from Year 2

• interpret and construct simple pictograms, tally charts, block diagrams and tables

And revisited every year until they sit GCSE.

No wonder children can find maths a bit boring

Pictograms certainly aren't revisited every year in most schools.

The likelihood for most children is that they will have a brief topic on bar charts / pictograms / pie charts / processing data in KS3 and probably won't look at it again , or there may be a revision lesson covering pie charts in the run up to the exam.