Fathom Dynamic Data

KS4 (Years 10 - 11)

Mathematics & ICT

This product is distributed by Chartwell-Yorke

Fathom Dynamic Data is an excellent program which supports nearly all aspects of data handling and statistical analysis within the Key Stage 4 Mathematics Curriculum. It comes with a wide range of support material that is well designed and easy to follow. Used with an interactive whiteboard, this would be an excellent resource for teacher demonstrations or for working with small to large groups. It is relatively easy to design your own practical or problems to be solved, and data from the Internet and spreadsheets can be imported easily. Fathom supports problem solving using a wide range of functions, formulae and charts, including arithmetic, conditional, distributions, logical, random number, statistical, text and trigonometric functions, and bar charts, column, histogram, quantile plots, ribbon plots, scatter diagrams, split charts and cumulative frequency.

Foundation Tier GCSE Mathematics students were introduced to Fathom and its Learning Guide in order to prepare them for a piece of GCSE coursework. The intention was to demonstrate that the package could be used to collect data sets and produce accurate graphs and statistics much more speedily and reliably than by pencil and paper methods. This would then allow students to spend more time developing, testing and evaluating hypotheses. Pupils found that Fathom was relatively straightforward to use and that they could create graphs and statistics easily. Importantly, students liked the unlimited 'undo' feature that enables them to recover from mistakes.