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Statistical questions worksheets

“How old is the oldest student in my class?” has one answer. “How old are the students in my class?” has thirty. These free printable worksheets ask a child to tell those apart, which is where the whole of statistics starts.

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Statistical questions
Statistical questions worksheet — Four questions to read, free printable with answer key

The answer key prints on a separate page.

What's on this sheet

The test is one sentence and it is the only thing worth memorizing: ask the question twice. If the answer is the same both times, it is not statistical. If it comes out different for every student, every tree, every day, it is — and that difference is the thing statistics exists to describe.

Why this sheet works

Every wrong option on these pages names one DETERMINED member of the same group: the oldest student, the tallest tree, the cheapest store. That is deliberate, and it closes the two shortcuts a page like this usually leaves open. A question about a group is normally the longer one, so a child could circle the longest line and score full marks — measured on an earlier draft, the answer was the longest option 40.6% of the time against a 25% baseline. And “look for the plural” stops working when every option has one.

How this one works

Is it a statistical question?

same answer every time→not statistical
a different answer each time→statistical
find the one that VARIES
What did the students score on the spelling test?
  1. Try each one out loud and ask: would I get the SAME answer every time, or a different one each time I asked?
  2. Three of these have a single answer. One gives a different answer each time.
  3. What did the students score on the spelling test? — the students did not all score the same; the others have one answer each.

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