1. The SKILLS exam Learning Objectives
Understand what is required for the skills exam
Review and practise some of these skills.

2. On TUESDAY morning at 10.45am,
24th MAY 2011, you will have to sit the following exam:
1 hour
50 marks
Worth 30% of AS (and 15% of A level)
2 sections
Answer ALL questions on the paper
YOU WILL NEED
Calculator
Protractor
Pair of compasses
Pencil
Rubber
Ruler
Pencil sharpener
Black pen

3. QUESTION 1
½ hour; 25 marks
Geographical skills questions based on either RIVERS or POPULATION
You will need some knowledge of BOTH core topics but designed to test skills over knowledge
e.g. can you draw a graph from a table of data?

4. QUESTION 2
½ hour; 25 marks
Geographical skills questions based on FIELDWORK
You will need to describe and explain what you did on your river field trip and how you analysed the data afterwards.

5. Basic Skills Investigative Skills Cartographic Skills Graphical Skills
There are many different skills you need to be able to do:
Basic Skills
Investigative Skills
Cartographic Skills
Graphical Skills
ICT Skills
Statistical Skills

6. You will not be expected to name any of these skills
These are some of the skills we have already covered at least once in class: You will also have covered many of these skills in GCSE Maths and Geography
Annotating diagrams, sketches, photos, graphs etc
Overlays
Literacy and numeracy skills
Risk assessing
Data presentation
Atlases
Field sketches
OS maps (incl. isolines)
Maps with located proportional symbols
Flow line maps
Choropleth maps
Line, bar and scatter graphs
Pie charts
Triangular graphs
Radial diagrams
Logarithmic scales
Use of databases
Use of GIS
Presentation using ICT
Mean, mode median
Interquartile range
Standard deviation
Spearmans’ rank
You will not be expected to name any of these skills
You will be expected to interpret/complete graphs/maps/diagrams etc and to perform simple calculations
Understanding command words is essential; for example, a common pitfall is explaining when the question asks for description.

7. Basic Skills Literacy (using good English and geographical language)
Annotations
(labels that describe and explain; they may be on sketches, diagrams, maps, photos etc)
Using overlays

8. Investigative Skills Identifying aims and geographical questions
Collecting data
(using appropriate sampling techniques from both primary and secondary sources)
Analysing, presenting and interpreting data
Drawing conclusions
(and showing awareness of their validity)
Evaluating your research
Risk assessment

9. Cartographic Skills Atlases Degrees and Minutes 51°30’ 51°00’ 50°30’
50°00’
02°30’
02°00’
01°30’
01°00’

10. Cartographic Skills Atlases, base maps, sketch maps, OS maps
(you need to be able to find and give grid references, sketch areas from atlas maps, identify the
shape of the land using contours, measure distances, describe patterns etc.
Maps with located proportional symbols
(these could include squares, circles, semi-circles or bars)
Maps showing movement
(flow lines, desire lines and trip lines)
Choropleth, Isoline and Dot maps

11. Graphical Skills
Line graphs (simple, comparative, compound and divergent)
Bar graphs (simple, comparative, compound and divergent)
Scatter graphs (and use of best fit line)
Pie charts & Proportional divided circles
Triangular graphs
Radial diagrams
Logarithmic scales
Dispersion diagrams

12. ICT Skills Remotely sensed data
(photos and images captured by satellite)
Databases
(e.g. national statistics website, environment agency website, meteorological office data)
GIS
(e.g. google earth/maps, mapzone)
Presentation using ICT
(producing text, maps, images, graphs etc on the computer)

13. Statistical Skills Measures of Central tendency (Mean, Mode, Median)
Measures of Dispersion
(Range, Interquartile Range, Standard Deviation)
Statistical Tests
(Spearman's Rank)

14. Skills practice Triangular Graph
This lesson we are going to go over some skills that we haven’t done before/only covered briefly......
Triangular Graph
Percentage of electricity produced by generating source for selected countries
Thermal and other (%)
Nuclear (%)
For example France is:
Nuclear:
Hydroelectric:
Thermal and other:
Hydroelectric (%)

15. Isoline Maps
Isoline maps represent data by connecting a series of points into lines. You will have already used one type of isoline map many times… do you know what it is?
Here is another example of an isoline map.
- What does it show?

16. What can you conclude from this map?
Plot a place that has 23°C.
What can you conclude from this map?
Isolines = Isotherms

17. Dot maps What is a dot map? A map that shows the spatial
distribution of a variable
as a number of equal sized dots.
What is a benefit and a limitation of dot maps?
Good for quick impression of
distribution
BUT...
Large number of dots are difficult
to count for precise number.
GIS dot map to show population in Brazil, using 1 dot to represent 100,000 people

18. Simple Comparative Compound Divergent
Graph Type AQA
Simple
Comparative
Compound
Divergent
Also Called:
Bar Charts
Multiple bar charts
Clustered
Divided Bar Charts
Composite
Population Pyramids
Bi-Polar graphs
Watch out for
One axis has values, the other categories
Can be located
Keep simple,
Up to four categories – more than 5 use separate graph [3 = triangular?]
Often adds up to 100% but can be proportional. Largest value at the top of the stack, no more than 5 divisions]
May be either actual values or percentages. Two sets of data
Looks Like
Bar chart

19. Proportional divided circles
Pie charts and
Proportional divided circles
Can you draw a pie chart?
Try drawing a pie chart to show the sources of pollution incidents in English and Welsh rivers in 1996.
Pollutant
Number of Incidents
Sewage 15
Industry 10
Agriculture 6
Transport 4
Others
TOTAL = 50 so Sewage =
15/50 x 360 = 108°

20. √ Pie charts and Proportional divided circles r = (v/π)
These are the same pie charts but drawn in relation to the size of the dataset.
Ethnicity
Isle of Wight
Portsmouth
White
130982
176882
Mixed Race
719
1859
Asian
432
4555
Black
304
942
Chinese or Other
294
2463
Total
The size of the pie chart for the Isle of Wight therefore would be smaller than that of Portsmouth.
This is calculated using the formula:
V = total number to be represented
r = radius of circle √
r = (v/π)
So IOW proportional circle radius is: /

21. What type of graph is this?
Located proportional divided circles

22. Finding the ‘central tendency’
Mean, Mode and Median –
Finding the ‘central tendency’
Mean – Add up all the values and divide by number in the data set
Mode – This is the value that occurs most frequently in a data set
Median – This is the middle value of a data set when all figures are arranged in rank order.
(the mean of the middle two values if an even number in data set)
Problems with the central tendency calculations:
They all give different results, which do you believe?
None give a reliable picture of the distribution of the data set
So you need to give the dispersion of the data instead...

23. Measures of Dispersion
Range – Difference between the highest and lowest values in the data set
Inter-quartile range - Rank the data in order of size and divide it into four equal sized groups (quartiles). The upper quartile is between the 1st and 2nd quartile and the lower quartile is between the 3rd and 4th quartile. The difference between the upper and lower quartile is the inter-quartile range.
The IQR indicates the spread of the middle 50% of data around the MEDIAN value and so is a better indicator of the degree to which the data is spread/dispersed either side of the middle value.
Standard Deviation – Measures the degree of dispersion about the MEAN value of the data set. SD
A low SD shows data is clustered around mean and dispersion is narrow.
A high SD shows data is widely spread around mean and dispersion is large.

24. Practice Questions for central tendency and dispersion
Mean- Value
Mean- Value
MEAN
Add all values up and divide by number of variables
693.67
664.07

25. Practice Questions Dispersion Diagram 1,200 Annual rainfall (mm)
Mean- Value
Mean- Value
Dispersion Diagram
You can check to see if its right on p.327 of textbook – think is the same data just one yr less
693.67
664.07
Southeast
England
North
Nigeria

26. Practice Questions Range = highest - lowest 693.67 664.07
Highest value
Range = highest - lowest
Mean- Value
Mean- Value
Lowest value
693.67
664.07

27. Practice Questions Median 693.67 644.07
Highest value
Upper quartile
Mean- Value
Mean- Value
Median
Lower quartile
Lowest value
693.67
644.07
Northern Nigeria: Inter-quartile range (IQR) = 850 – 380 =

28. This measures the degree of dispersion around the mean.
Practice Questions
Mean- Value
Mean- Value
Standard Deviation
This measures the degree of dispersion around the mean.
The SD for the SE of England is low so ...
Variance = total of square roots/number of values in data set
SD = Square root of variance
288.07
82984
9.07
82.3
163.67
The SD for N Nigeria is high so ...
116.92
216308
693.67
644.07
107033
14420
Variance = Total divided by number in data set
120
327
Standard deviation is the square root of the variance.