Grade 6: Statistics and Probability

Find the Median and Mean

Get a deck of regular playing cards, remove all the face cards (the jacks, queens, kings, and jokers), then have your child deal out seven cards face up.  

First, ask your child to organize the cards in numerical order. Then have them write down the median of the set of numbers on paper. You can find the median of a series of numbers by putting the numbers in numerical order and then identifying the number in the center.  

After your child writes down the median, ask them to find the mean by adding all the numbers in the series together and then dividing by how many numbers there are. 

Encourage your child to total the numbers mentally and check by recording the addition on paper. For this game, they will divide the sum by seven. 

When they have found both the median and the mean, deal a new set of seven cards and play another round! 

To make this activity more challenging, have your child deal an even number of cards instead of an odd number. This will affect the way you identify the median. If a set of numbers has an even number of terms, there will be two numbers in the center. The median of an even group of numbers is equal to the mean of those two numbers. When you get to the point in the activity where your child identifies the median, guide them to add the two numbers and divide the sum by two.