Fathom 2.01
Fathom 2 is easy to use, versatile and a powerful tool for handling data. There are short movies to show you the basics as well as detailed help files, and it does not take very long for you to get a feel for what the software can do.
Using the collections of data included in the package, it was very easy to create a variety of graphs and summary statistics (some of which produced interesting graphs or results which I have pursued with some of my students). The real power behind the software however, is the ability to click on individual points or entries and see the connection to the other graphs and statistics on the page. I imported one year group's key stage 2 and 3 results, (without the usual difficulties that I have with missing data etc. when using other data software). Within seconds I had a plot of the students' results. Clicking on a single dot brought up details of an individual student, allowing me to look quickly at special cases. It makes your SATs results so much easier to analyse! I could rearrange the order in which the categories to make the diagrams more meaningful and you just drag these categories to a table and you instantly have the summary statistics.
The visual aspects make it ideal for the classroom, as students can instantly see the data as a whole in a variety of representations whilst still being able to see the impact an individual data point can have. Grouping data is easy and the individual points are still easily accessible once the data has been grouped, there is no loss of information. One possible disadvantage is the size of the text and diagrams. When I used it on my interactive whiteboard it was impossible to read any of the information from the middle of my classroom let alone the back and I have not yet found a way to resolve this.
Jenni Ingram, KS3 Coordinator for Mathematics • Sidney Stringer Maths and Computing Specialist School
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