Variation Worksheet

Biology, Genetics and evolution , Human and Animal Biology, Age 14-16

Gives brighter students something a bit more challenging to think about than the usual tongue-rolling / attached unattached questions. The sheet addresses distribution curves, outliers, lines of best fit and continuous/discontinuous variation. It points out that eye-colour is complicated. It gives them a 6 mark extended Q to answer and they look at how they answered it. Markscheme included.


Variation Name: ………………………………………………………….. /25 Look at the three graphs… 1. What does frequency mean? [1] 2. Label one of the axes of each graph frequency [1] 3. Which of these graphs could represent … … the lengths of fish in a pond? … blood groups in a city? … eye colours in a school? [3] 4. What is continuous variation? [1] Which two of these graphs definitely show ‘continuous variation’? [2] Could the other one be an example of continuous variation? [1] If I said that it was based on 10000 individuals does that change your answer? [1] Why? / Why not? [1] 5. Graph A above is heights of boys in Y10 to the nearest 10cm. In that graph, the largest frequency is 50. The mode is 160cm. What would it have looked like if… We’d used a more accurate ruler? … and we’d measured all the Y10 boys in