Surveys, Lists and Tables
Data starts with a question
Every dataset begins life as a question someone actually wanted answered: how do we get to school, which sauce should the sizzle stock, which number does the die favour? Year 2 opens four doors to the answers — ask people (a survey), watch what happens (observation), make it happen (an experiment), or let a device do the counting (a digital tool). Whatever the door, what comes through is a mess of single answers, and the craft of this unit is turning that mess into lists and tables that can be read.
A survey is asking, written down
A survey is asking, written down. The discipline is in the writing: every answer goes on the list, in the order it arrives, with nothing improved and nothing skipped — a list is a faithful diary of the data. Its weakness is deliberate to notice: ten honest answers in arrival order are surprisingly hard to read. Children should feel that difficulty for a moment, because it is the exact reason sorting and tables were invented.
Observation: when you cannot ask
Some data cannot be asked for. A car at the school gate will not fill in a survey; you watch, and you mark what you see as you see it. That is observation, and the tally marks from Year 1 are its natural pencil — quick enough to keep up with events that will not wait. The skill is recording in the moment: an arrival missed is a number quietly wrong forever.
A table is a sorted list, counted
A table is a sorted list with the counting already done. Sorting means choosing categories the question actually cares about — the sizzle needs tomato, barbecue and none, not what colour shirt the customer wore. Each order then has exactly one home, and when the last one lands, the table reads itself: category beside count, two columns doing the work of a hundred scattered answers. If an answer fits no category, the categories were chosen badly — choose again.
An experiment makes its own data
An experiment is data you make yourself. Nobody can survey a die; you roll it, and the results exist only because you acted. The rule that matters is recording every result, including the dull ones — an experiment where only the exciting rolls get written down is not an experiment, it is a story. Rolling, dropping, planting, timing: Year 2 experiments are small, but the habit of letting the results speak for themselves is the whole of science in miniature.
Digital tools count for you
Digital tools record, sort and count in the same instant — a class clicker has the table built before the last hand goes down. Children should use the speed and also see through it: underneath, the tool is doing exactly what the sausage sorter did, one category, one count, nothing more mysterious. A tool that counts for you is a gift; a tool you cannot explain is a trap. Fast is good — understood and fast is better.
Tables answer questions
The table is where the work pays off. Which was most common, how many in all, how many more of this than that — each question is answered by numbers already sitting in plain sight, no recount needed. Hold on to the loop this unit walked: a question, a door to the data, a sort, a table, an answer. The next unit takes the very same table and dresses it as different graphs — new clothes, same numbers, and the comparing of those costumes is its own small art.