11 plus Tables & Two-Way Tables questions

What a Tables & Two-Way Tables question looks like

A Tables & Two-Way Tables question in the 11 plus shows one table and asks a single thing about it, with five options underneath. What separates this type from the paper’s other data questions is that every number it needs is already printed in a cell: nothing is read off a scale, traced along a line or judged from a slice of a circle. The difficulty is which cell, and what to do with two or three of them together.

The tables cover more ground than the name suggests. Alongside two-way tables there are price lists and a cafe menu, a membership table with a normal price column and an offer price column, frequency tables counting pets owned or goals scored, train and coach timetables, distance charts between cities, postage rates by weight band, phone tariffs, car park charges and shoe size conversions.

The jobs repeat: read one cell, add a row up, take one cell from another, find the largest or smallest in a row, work back to a blank value, or pick the row that fits a set of conditions, then carry the numbers into money, fractions or percentages.

Example one: a two-way table

It records what children chose for lunch: boys and girls down the side, the three choices across the top, totals around the edge.

How many more girls than boys chose pasta?

Find the Pasta column first, because the question names it. Go down that column to the Girls row: 9. Then to the Boys row: 8. “How many more” means take the smaller away from the larger, so 9 - 8 = 1.

The answer is 1.

The tempting wrong option is 5, from using the Total column instead of the Pasta column: 30 girls and 25 boys, and 30 - 25 = 5. That is the difference between the two groups, not the difference in pasta. Another option is 3, the same subtraction done in the Pizza column.

Example two: a table with two price columns

In January, three juniors and one student join a tennis club, each paying the January price. What do they pay altogether?

Two rows to find, one column to stay in. The question says January price, so the last column is the only one that matters. A junior pays £19.45 and there are three of them, so 3 x £19.45 = £58.35. A student pays £27.50. Add them: £58.35 + £27.50 = £85.85.

The answer is £85.85.

£120.00 waits for a child who slips into the yearly price column: 3 x £28.00 + £36.00. £46.95 waits for one who counts a single junior instead of three. Both come from a table read right and a question read too fast.

Example three: a timetable

A timetable gives one service in each column and one station in each row.

Omar has to be at Marram Sands by 12:00. What is the latest train he can take from Quillon Road?

The condition is about Marram Sands, so start on the Marram Sands row: 11:19, 11:37, 11:54, 12:12. Three are before 12:00, and the latest is 11:54, which belongs to train 3. Go up that column to the Quillon Road row: 11:22.

The answer is 11:22.

The trap is 11:40, the last departure from Quillon Road: a child who works along the top row without checking the Marram Sands row takes it, but that train arrives at 12:12. And 11:54 tempts too, the arrival time given instead of the departure.

How to answer it

1. Read the question before the table and decide what it wants: one value, a total, a difference, the cheapest choice or a time. “How many more”, “in total” and “at least” each change the job, and at least 3 includes exactly 3.
2. Name the row and name the column, out loud. “Girls row, Pasta column.” Most wrong answers here are the right number taken from the wrong cell.
3. Write each number down as it comes out of the table. Two numbers on paper are easier to work with than two fingers on a screen.
4. Do the arithmetic, then check it against the labels. A row should add up to its total, so one quick sum shows whether they read the line they meant to.
5. Read the question once more before choosing. If it asked for the change, do not stop at the price; if it asked what was saved, do not stop at the cheaper amount.

Common mistakes

• Right row, wrong column. These tables often carry two similar columns side by side: a normal price and an offer price, first class and second class. The wrong column always has an option waiting.
• Giving a total when the question asked about one cell. The Total row and column hold the biggest, easiest numbers to see, so they get picked when the question was about pasta, or Tuesday.
• Stopping one step early. The parking charge instead of the change from £5, the subtotal before the 10% discount, the first leg instead of the whole journey. All those in-between numbers are in the options.
• Choosing a band by the nearest number rather than the one the amount fits into. A 350 g parcel belongs in “up to 500 g”, not “up to 250 g”. A stay of 2 hours 25 minutes belongs in “up to 3 hours”, not “up to 2 hours”.
• Reading a timetable along the wrong line. A later station’s arrival time gets used as a departure time, or a time is read off the service in the next column.

How to practise 11 plus Tables & Two-Way Tables questions

These are among the steadier marks in the eleven plus maths paper: the numbers are all given, and the reading is the skill being tested. The habit worth building is slow on the labels, quick on the arithmetic: find the row label, find the column label, then work. When your child gets one wrong, ask which cell they used rather than which answer they picked: the answer they chose is nearly always the right value for a different cell. 11+ Daily has a Tables & Two-Way Tables project inside its 11 plus maths practice, covering two-way tables, price lists, frequency tables, timetables and distance charts. Every question is original to 11+ Daily, nothing is a past paper, nothing is licensed from another publisher, and the bank is re-checked in rounds. We have also written about how much 11 plus practice a child needs each day.

Questions parents ask