Sleep Patterns: Mean, Median, Range, IQR & Histogram
Storyline:
Your school’s health committee is launching a campaign to promote better sleep habits. They’ve collected sleep data from 7th and 8th graders and asked for your help to analyze it.
As a student data analyst, your job is to investigate how much students in each grade are sleeping and whether there’s a real difference between the two groups.
📊 What Students Will Do:
- Analyze real-world sleep data for 7th and 8th grade
- Calculate key statistical measures:
- Mean – the average sleep hours
- Median – the typical sleep value
- Range – how widely sleep hours vary
- IQR (Q3 − Q1) – how consistent most students' sleep patterns are
- Record their results in a structured table
- Compare both groups using dropdowns and written responses
- Interpret side-by-side histograms to visualize distributions
- Make informal inferences about who sleeps more and who is more consistent
🎯 Skills Practiced:
- Measures of center and variability
- Comparative reasoning
- Histogram interpretation
- Informal inference between two populations (7.SP.B)
Learning Objective
Students will compare two populations using measures of center (mean and median) and measures of variability (range and interquartile range). Through analysis of real-world sleep data from 7th and 8th graders, students will draw informal comparative inferences, interpret distribution patterns using histograms, and explain how statistical measures provide insight into group differences and consistency.
Randomization Available
This worksheet supports randomization, which means each student will receive a different set of 12 sleep data points to analyze. The data will vary slightly for each student but will stay mostly within the same range for both 7th and 8th grade groups.
💡 Tip: When assigning this activity to your classroom, you can optionally enable randomization to give each student a unique version of the problems. When you re-assign the same worksheet, each student will get a new set of questions, helping them master the content through repeated practice.
