Look at the following quotation from a middle school newspaper article.

"The student's name is Terry Jones and he is in grade six. Mr. Jones' favorite recreation is performing on his violin."

Create a frequency table to determine the number of times the following letters appear: r, s, t, a, and e.

Answer:

Marty says vowels are used more often than consonants in the English language. Using the above passage, how could you organize your frequency table in order to show whether Marty is correct?

Sample correct response: Students should organize the frequency table into consonants and vowels to determine which occurs more often.

Create a frequency table to determine the number of times all the letters in the paragraph appear. Identify the six letters with the highest frequencies.

Describe another method you could use to display the data for the six letters with the highest frequencies. Explain why your method is effective.

Sample correct response: Students should discuss the use of a bar graph or a circle graph to display the data. They may point out that the bar graph may show more clearly how much larger one frequency is than the other. A histogram would not be appropriate as the data is categorical and discrete, not continuous.