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Organizing data is a crucial first step when working with numerical information. It helps us see patterns and find relationships more easily. When given a list of numbers, like in our example \(14, 18, 27, 36, 18, 73\), start by arranging them in order from the smallest to the largest. This process is called sorting.
Listing the numbers in ascending order, we get:

• 14
• 18
• 18
• 27
• 36
• 73

Arranging numbers makes it easier to see if some numbers repeat or notice any gaps or clusters.
Organizing data is the bedrock of statistical analysis, making subsequent steps like finding the mode and range more straightforward.

Statistics in prealgebra gives students foundational tools for analyzing data. It involves learning how data behaves and how we can represent it meaningfully. Two fundamental concepts in statistics are the mode and the average (mean), which often introduce students early on to how statistical methods work in more complex scenarios.
The mode represents the value that appears the most frequently in a set. In our example, the number 18 appears more times than any other number, making it the mode. Understanding the mode helps identify the most common or popular data point in a given set.
In prealgebra, students learn to identify these characteristics to summarize and interpret data. This is critical for understanding larger datasets in real-world contexts.

Calculating the range helps you understand how spread out the numbers in a set are. It is a simple measure of the data's variability.
To determine the range, we identify the highest and lowest numbers from the sorted list. Using our example, the lowest number is 14, and the highest is 73.
The formula to find the range is straightforward: \[\text{Range} = \text{Highest Number} - \text{Lowest Number}\]Substituting the numbers we have:
\[\text{Range} = 73 - 14 = 59\]
The range tells us that there is a 59-unit spread from the lowest to the highest value. This information can show us how varied the data might be, but does not tell us anything about how the in-between values are distributed.