← SSAT® Middle Level

Algebra, Geometry and Other Math: Data, Graphs and Probability

Tables, bar and line and circle graphs, frequency tables built from tallies, mean and median, trends and inferences, and probability as a branching tree.

8 topics · 38 questions

Each topic is a path, not a menu: work down it in order and every question builds on the one above. Click any of them to watch the answer draw itself.

Reading Tables

  1. How it worksHow do you pull one value out of a table by crossing a row with a column?
  2. Worked exampleFind Tuesday's total when a table lists 14 apples, 9 pears and 22 plums sold that day.
  3. Worked exampleFind the largest temperature swing among highs of 72, 65 and 80 with lows of 51, 49 and 62.
Your turneasy1 of 3
A table of Tuesday's sales lists 25 apples, 17 pears and 42 plums. How many pieces of fruit were sold that day?

Bar Graphs and Picture Graphs

  1. How it worksHow does the height of a bar turn into a value using the scale printed up the side?
  2. Worked exampleFind the value of a bar that stops exactly halfway between the 40 and 60 gridlines.
  3. Worked exampleFind the total when a picture graph shows three and a half symbols worth 20 things each.
  4. Common mistakeWhy does a bar graph whose scale starts at 90 instead of 0 exaggerate the differences?
  5. Going furtherWhat happens to a picture graph when its key changes from 10 per symbol to 100 per symbol?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A bar stops exactly halfway between the gridlines marked 48 and 109. What value does it show?

Line Graphs and Circle Graphs

  1. How it worksHow does the steepness of a line graph segment show how fast something is changing?
  2. How it worksHow does a circle graph turn percents into wedges, with 25 percent becoming a quarter turn?
  3. Worked exampleFind the number of degrees in a pie slice standing for 30 percent of a budget.
  4. Worked exampleFind how many of 250 students chose pizza when its pie slice covers 40 percent.
  5. Going furtherWhat can a circle graph never tell you that a bar graph of the same data can?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A circle graph shows a slice standing for 62 percent of a budget. How many degrees does that slice cover? Round to two decimal places.

Frequency Tables and Tally Marks

  1. How it worksHow does a frequency table turn a messy list of results into a count for each value?
  2. How it worksHow do the bars of a histogram grow straight out of the counts in a frequency table?
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't the tallest bar in a frequency chart the same thing as the average value?
  4. Worked exampleFind the most common shoe size when sizes 6, 7, 8 and 9 have counts of 3, 8, 5 and 2.
  5. Worked exampleFind how many students were surveyed when the four frequencies come to 3, 8, 5 and 2.
Your turneasy1 of 3
A frequency table lists four values with frequencies of 3, 8, 5 and 16. How many people were surveyed altogether?

Mean, Median, Mode and Range

  1. How it worksHow does the median find the middle by sorting first, and what do you do with an even count?
  2. How it worksHow does the mean balance a set of values like weights sitting on a seesaw?
  3. Worked exampleFind the mean, median, mode and range of 4, 7, 7, 9 and 13.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't the median simply the number halfway between the smallest and the largest?
  5. Worked exampleFind the median of 3, 8, 12, 15, 20 and 21.
Your turneasy1 of 3
Find the mean of 4, 7, 7, 9 and 27. Round to two decimal places.

Simple Probability

  1. How it worksHow does probability become wanted outcomes divided by total equally likely outcomes?
  2. Worked exampleFind the probability of drawing a red marble from a bag holding 4 red, 5 blue and 3 green.
  3. Worked exampleFind the probability of rolling a number greater than 4 on one six-sided die.
  4. Common mistakeWhy doesn't a coin that landed heads five times in a row become more likely to show tails?
  5. Going furtherWhat happens to a probability when you switch to asking for the chance it does not happen?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A bag holds 8 red marbles, 9 blue and 9 green. Find the probability of drawing a red one. Round to three decimal places.

Counting Outcomes and Probability Trees

  1. How it worksHow does a tree diagram branch once for every choice, with each path becoming an outcome?
  2. How it worksHow do you multiply along a branch of a probability tree to get that path's chance?
  3. Worked exampleFind how many different outcomes three coin flips can produce, using a tree.
  4. Worked exampleFind the probability of getting heads twice in a row on two fair coin flips.
  5. Ties togetherHow do probability trees, percents and frequency tables all describe the same counted data?
Your turneasy1 of 3
How many different outcomes can 7 coin flips produce?

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