Everyday each of us makes many decisions. We decide what to do, where to go, what to eat, what to buy, and how to do the things that are important to us. We make these decisions based on data. Data is any information that we can collect in an organized manner to answer a question. Some data that we collect can be used to answer many questions. Sometimes we want to save data and come back to it at a later time. Being able to sort through and organize data efficiently can be very useful, saving a lot of energy, time, and money.

Let's think about an example from school. A coach must record ages, grades, home addresses, emergency telephone numbers, and parent names of all the players on the soccer team. He will need this information the to order soccer shirts, shorts, and shoes in the right sizes for everyone on the team. He creates a form for each student requesting all of this information. Now he wants to order the clothing and shoes. Before the season starts, the coach must supply each manufacturer the number of each size he needs. Since he has 20 team members and 20 sheets he must filter through all of the papers. As the season starts he needs to send notices about the practice schedule to each parent. How would you organize all of this data so that it is easy to use?

Spend five minutes discussing this problem with other people in your group and write your ideas down.