Statistics
Year 6 is when children meet pie charts properly. They read and interpret a pie chart to compare the slices, then use the chart together with a known total to work out how many each slice stands for, building a real sense of how data turns into the right-sized portions of a whole.
Practise Statistics
Have a guess, even if you're not sure. Get one wrong and we'll show you why, so every miss is a chance to learn.
Timed practice
The same practice, just with a gentle clock. Pick a length and see how many you can answer.
Good to know
Reading a pie chart
A pie chart shows how a whole splits into parts. The bigger the slice, the bigger its share of the total.
The mean
The mean evens things out: add every score together, then share the total equally between them.
Add them up: 4 + 8 + 3 + 6 + 9 = 30
Share it between them: 30 ÷ 5 = 6. That is the mean.
For grown-ups
Line graphs become a reasoning tool this year, with children reading off values and comparing two sets of data drawn on the same axes to see where the lines cross or the gap is widest. This is also the year they learn the mean as a type of average: how to calculate it by adding the values and dividing by how many there are, what that single number actually tells you about a whole set, and how to use it to answer a question. Reading parts as shares of a whole and summarising data with an average are exactly the habits that carry into secondary statistics.
What is in this topic
- Reading and interpreting pie charts
- Using a pie chart and a total to find a quantity
- Building a pie chart from the data
- Line graph problems, and comparing two data sets on one graph
- Calculating, using and interpreting the mean as an average
How to help at home
By Year 6, these charts and averages are less about reading numbers off a page and more about reasoning with them, so the most useful thing you can do at home is keep asking your child to explain what a slice or a line is actually telling them. Short, talky sessions over real charts beat silent worksheets.
- Read pie charts as parts of a whole, not separate pictures. Point at a slice and ask what fraction of the circle it covers: if one slice is a quarter of a survey of 200 people, that is 200 divided by 4, so 50 people.
- Once they can name the fraction, turn it into a quantity using the total. Say the total is 80 and a slice is half the circle: half of 80 is 40, and a slice that is a quarter would be 80 divided by 4, so 20.
- On a line graph with two lines, get them comparing rather than just reading one point. Ask 'where is the gap biggest?' or 'when does the blue line overtake the red?' so they track both sets of data at once.
- Practise the mean on everyday numbers. Add four test scores like 12, 15, 9 and 8 to get 44, then divide by 4 to get 11, and talk about why that single number stands in for the whole set.
Where children get stuck
The most common pie chart slip is reading a slice as a raw count rather than a share of the total. A child sees a big slice and writes a big number, ignoring that the same slice means 50 people on one chart and 5 on another. Always go back to the question 'what fraction of the whole circle is this, and what is the whole worth?' so the slice is read as, say, a quarter of 80 rather than just 'the large one'.
The other wobble is with the mean: children often forget to divide, or divide by the wrong amount, after carefully adding everything up. A child might total 4, 7, 6 and 3 to get 20 and then write 20 as the answer. The fix is to make 'divide by how many values there are' a fixed second step they say out loud every time: add them all, then count how many there were, then share the total between them, so 20 shared between 4 is 5.