Critiquing statistics in the media
Identify statistically informed arguments in traditional and digital media and critique their methods, data representations (e.g. truncated axes, distorted pictographs, selective data) and conclusions
Lesson
Set out your lesson
“Critiquing statistics in the media means practising the idea at the table with counters or paper models and one clear check. We will demo once, then your child tries.”
Bring to the table
- Place-value cards or columns (hundreds/tens/ones)
- Digit cards 0–9
Extra for the adult
Worked example. In 243, the 2 means 2 hundreds, the 4 means 4 tens, the 3 means 3 ones.
Optional challenge. For Critiquing statistics in the media, add one harder example after success.
What to notice. Keep one parent note: examples tried; results; support used. This session samples Critiquing statistics in the media, not mastery.
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1 approach
Critiquing statistics in the media means practising the idea at the table with counters or paper models and one clear check. We will demo once, then your child tries.
Materials: Place-value cards or columns (hundreds/tens/ones); Digit cards 0–9. Adult builds 243 and names hundreds, tens, ones. Child builds three numbers and names each place. Done: three numbers built with correct place names. Stop after the fresh check; keep optional challenge for another day.
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Learning resources
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Illustrative Mathematics · Practice link — not the full lesson
Peyton's Books
Before you open · source notes
Peyton's Books supports critiquing statistics in the media. Not every worksheet pack.
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Source, access and review notes
Public Illustrative Mathematics task page. The .html address responds HTTP 308 to this URL. An anonymous GET of this URL on 2026-11-12 returned HTTP 200 with no login or payment prompt. Where a teacher solution is present, it is on the same page as the student task; this check did not find a separate locked student view. An adult can use the student view section and should not read a solution aloud. Advertising was not observed in the fetched HTML text; that is not a browser, device, or ad-free guarantee. This is a paper or discussion task, not an automatically marked interactive game. Opening the link does not save practice or assess mastery. Diagrams on the page use missing or filename-only alt text, so they are not an accessible image equivalent. Accessibility still depends on an adult describing the picture.
Illustrative Mathematics. “Peyton's Books.” Licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. External task; Gakuva does not copy, host, embed, or redistribute it.
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Check understanding
- Explain how a bar graph whose vertical axis starts at 90 exaggerates a small difference
- Identify the sample size and who was surveyed in a news claim such as '9 out of 10 kids prefer Brand X' and judge whether the conclusion is justified
- Rewrite a misleading online headline so that it matches what the data actually show
“If your child sees an ad saying '9 out of 10 kids prefer this cereal' or a graph with a stretched-out axis, can they ask who was asked and whether the graph makes the difference look bigger than it is?”
Curriculum record
- Type
- Conceptual
- Subject
- Mathematics
- Domain
- Data & Statistics
- Age range
- Ages 10–13
Standards