Learning with iPad - Singapore in Numbers (Math)

 

Context

In today's data-driven world, the ability to understand, interpret, and communicate insights from data is essential. This activity gives students the opportunity to work with real-world datasets from the Government on data.gov.sg, helping them develop skills in data cleaning, visualisation, and critical thinking.

By investigating topics of their choice, or focusing on themes like the environment, transportation, housing, or population, students will uncover trends, ask questions, and tell meaningful stories about Singapore through data.

Preparation and Flow

Intro & Demo (10m)

Show an interesting visualisation from the news or a government report. Ask: "What story is this graph telling you about Singapore?”

Demonstrate how to get data from data.gov.sg and use Numbers to present it. 

data.gov.sg is a repository of freely-available Singapore Government data. It includes datasets spanning a wide range from the environment, to economy, to housing. Encourage students to explore and find what they’re interested in learning more about.

Retrieving data from data.gov.sg

Select a topic you’re interested in (Arts & Culture, Education, Economy, Environment, Geospatial, Housing, Health, Social, Transport) or search up a particular dataset or agency

 

 

Using the filtering tools, select for datasets that come in the “CSV” format

Select a dataset and scroll to the Data Explorer to preview and download the dataset. To download, tap on the download button beside the file name. The file will be saved to your iPad’s Downloads folder

 

Analysing the data in Numbers

Open Numbers and navigate to the downloaded file.

  

Select Edit and you can get started editing the dataset and cleaning up the data. Delete unneeded columns, rename columns with more readable titles, and filter out unneeded data.

 

Create a Chart: Select the columns you would like to include in your chart by tapping on the letter headers at the top. Select the Charts toolbar item and choose an appropriate chart.

 

Use Numbers to create a simple infographic featuring information from your graphs. This example file is attached in this post.

 

Hands-On (30m)

Get students to select a dataset and tell the story behind it! You may want to provide a theme or scope, such as focusing on the environment or specific issues.

Encourage students to customise and personalise their Numbers documents to best tell the story behind their datasets.

Submission

You can get them to submit the Numbers document as a Numbers file or a PDF document to SLS or any other Learning Management System.

Possible Extension

Explore Formulas

Explore how formulas in Numbers can help clean up data, reformat it, and make it easier to use.

From the LearnGrowCreate Team

Main author: Jia Chen