•  

  • 1 Learning styles
  • 2 Understanding the question including PICO and SPICE
  • 3 Organising your time
  • 4 Gathering information
  • 5 Finding Information: keywords and database searching
  • 6 Evaluating Information
  • 8 Plagiarism9 Harvard and APA referencing
  • 10 Numerical, OSCOLA and Chicago referencing
  • 11 Communicating Information
  • 12 Your digital footprint

Unit 7: Numeracy skills

Averages

There are several ways of expressing an average. The most common way is called a mean . This is one value which is representative of all the numbers in a group. The mean is calculated by adding up all the numbers in a group, then dividing by how many numbers there are.

Example 1 Find the average, or mean, of the following numbers:

2	+	6	+	4	+	8	+	5	+	5	=	3	0	=	5
-------------------------------												----
					6								6

Check your answer – in this case, most of the numbers are less than 5 but the very high value of 20 pulls the mean upwards, so the answer is sensible.

Example 3 In a test of numerical ability, students are tested in two groups. Which group has the higher average score?

Group A	Group B
3	7
15	6
8	10
9	11
12	19
13	20

3	+	1	5	+	8	+	9	+	1	2	+	1	3		7	+	6	+	1	0	+	1	1	+	1	9	+	20
-------------------------------------															----------------------------------------
						6															6
					=	6	0													=	7	3
						----															----
							6															6
					=	1	0													=	1	2	.	1	7

Group B has the higher average score

Test yourself with the questions on the next page.

SMILE - Numeracy skills by Tom Frank, Eric Williams and Clare Wright, University of Birmingham Careers Centre adapted by Marion Kelt Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.