Unit 2 · Topic 02 · Data Analysis and Representation (Google Sheets)
Every Friday the canteen ran out of samosas by 11 am.
Every Tuesday, forty-five cold ones went into the bin.
Nobody knew why. Everybody had a theory.
"Cook more," said Anaya. "Simple."
"More on which day?" asked Kabir.
Nobody could answer that, so Ms. Rao gave the class a job. For two weeks, one child would type the number of samosas sold into a Google Sheet each afternoon. Ten numbers. That was the whole task.
On day two Anaya announced the answer. "Tuesday is a big day. We sold 26!"
"Twenty-six is our smallest number so far," said Kabir. "And we only have two numbers."
Pixel's fan groaned. Even the old desktop knew that two numbers are not a pattern.
After two weeks the sheet showed 28, 26, 31, 29, 60 in week one, and 30, 27, 33, 28, 63 in week two. Friday stood out like a shout — roughly double every other day.
Kabir asked the canteen uncle why. Friday was games period, he said. Children came out hungry, with pocket money.
So the canteen changed one thing: 60 samosas on Friday, 30 on the other days. The old habit had been 45 every single day — far too few on Friday, far too many on Tuesday.
The next week six samosas went into the bin instead of forty-five. At ₹10 each, that is ₹390 saved in one week.
Ms. Rao made the class keep recording anyway. "How will you know it kept working?" she said.
In December the Friday numbers slipped. Games period had moved to Wednesday. The sheet noticed before anybody else did.
Data is not collected for fun. It gets used, in five main ways.
To decide. Cook 60 or cook 30? The numbers chose, not the loudest opinion. To spot a pattern. One big Friday is luck; two Fridays at 60 and 63 is a pattern. To predict. A pattern lets you guess next Friday sensibly — about 60 again. To keep a record. The sheet remembers what really happened, long after memories blur. To check a change worked. Waste fell from 45 to 6, and the same record showed when it stopped working in December.
One warning lives inside all five: too little data looks exactly like an answer. Anaya's two numbers felt convincing, and were wrong.
For one week, write down how many minutes you spend on homework each day. Seven numbers, nothing else.
On Sunday find your biggest day and your smallest day, then write one sentence predicting next Tuesday.
Next Tuesday, check it. Being wrong is useful data too.
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