Teaching · For Teachers

Paste the numbers.
Get the whole summary.

Test scores, reading minutes, lab measurements: paste a column from a spreadsheet or type the values. The calculator works out the center, the spread, the quartiles and the outlier fences, says whether the mean is being pulled away from the median, and prints a summary table ready for a report or a data meeting.

Summarize a data setWhat you get
$12one-time · every device you sign in on
Buy · $12

Included with Caveat Classroom and Whole-school licenses. Or get it in the For Teachers toolkit, $79 for 79 items.

Data sets

The worked example is made up: 24 unit test scores with one very low score, 15 nights of reading minutes and 8 seedling heights with a missing value. Saved on this device only.

Loading the data set form. If nothing appears, turn on JavaScript.

What you get

Teaching · For Teachers$12 · included with Classroom and Whole-school licenses

What you finish with
A record per data set: its name, what was measured, the unit, the values and four reporting checks. Works out n, mean, median, mode, minimum, maximum, range, quartiles, IQR, sample and population standard deviation and outlier fences; flags outliers, a mean pulled from the median, non-numeric entries and too little data. Prints a summary table.
Who it is for
Teachers, instructional coaches and school data teams summarizing assessment results, and teachers of statistics who want an answer key for a class data set.
Format
Browser calculator with a saved record per data set. Prints a summary table, the record, every data set in a table or a blank form; downloads a spreadsheet (.csv); exports and imports a file.
Access
$12 one-time, yours on every device you sign in on; the tool opens once you are signed in with it. Included with Caveat Classroom and Whole-school licenses. Also in the For Teachers toolkit ($79) and the Teaching Suite pass ($199), and 1 more bundle. Everything you type stays in this browser; nothing is sent to Caveat.
Where it lives
The For Teachers space in Caveat Teaching.
Support
Questions about access, an order or a correction: team@caveatacademic.com.

How to use it

  1. Name the data set.
  2. Paste or type the values.
  3. Read the center and spread.
  4. Check any outliers.
  5. Print the summary table.

Summarize a data set

Choosing what to report

Which summary fits the dataShape of the dataCenterSpreadRoughly symmetric, no outliersMeanStandard deviationSkewed, or with outliersMedianInterquartile rangeCategories or repeated valuesModeCounts or percentagesA small class (n under 10)Median, with nMinimum and maximumWhich summary fits the dataRoughly symmetric, no outliersCenter: MeanSpread: Standard deviationSkewed, or with outliersCenter: MedianSpread: Interquartile rangeCategories or repeated valuesCenter: ModeSpread: Counts or percentagesA small class (n under 10)Center: Median, with nSpread: Minimum and maximum
The calculator gives every statistic; the shape of the data decides which ones belong in the report.

How the quartiles are found

Sort the values and take the median. The first quartile is the median of the lower half and the third quartile the median of the upper half, leaving out the overall median when n is odd. This is the method in most U.S. introductory statistics courses and on graphing calculators. Spreadsheet functions such as QUARTILE.INC interpolate, so they can differ slightly on small data sets.

Sample or population

The sample standard deviation divides by n − 1 and estimates spread in a larger group the data stand in for. The population version divides by n and describes exactly the people measured. For one class’s test scores reported about that class, either is defensible; say which you used. An outlier by the 1.5 × IQR rule is a value more than 1.5 IQRs below Q1 or above Q3.

Sources

  1. NIST/SEMATECH e-Handbook of Statistical Methods. Measures of location, measures of scale and box plots (itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook).
  2. Moore, D. S., McCabe, G. P., and Craig, B. A. Introduction to the Practice of Statistics. W. H. Freeman: quartiles and the 1.5 × IQR rule.
  3. Tukey, J. W. (1977). Exploratory Data Analysis. Addison-Wesley.
  4. American Statistical Association. GAISE II: Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education, pre-K to 12 (2020).

The worked example is made up. Statistics are computed in your browser to full precision and shown rounded to two decimals. Nothing you type is sent to Caveat. Support: team@caveatacademic.com.