BTS (left), TWICE (right)

Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic (BTS); Han Myung-Gu/WireImage (TWICE)

STANDARDS

CCSS: 6.SP.B.5.C, MP2, MP3, MP6

TEKS: 6.12C, 7.12A

The K-POP Wave

The most talked about musical performance at the 2017 American Music Awards wasn’t sung in English. When the band BTS took the stage at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, California, the screams were deafening. Fans chanted the names of the seven performers to the rhythm of the song. The cheers nearly drowned out the singers’ voices! Millions more watched the performance on TV.

The group, also known as Bangtan Boys, became the first Korean popular music act to perform on a major American award show. Last year, BTS climbed the music charts, sold out U.S. concert arenas in minutes, and took home the Top Social Artist award at the 2018 Billboard Music Awards.

Ilgan Sports/Multi-Bits via Getty Images

iKON

But BTS is just one of a wave of groups producing Korean popular music, or K-Pop. Other K-pop groups include Red Velvet, Dreamcatcher, and Wanna One. They all performed around the world last year.

K-Pop has exploded in popularity since its start in the early 1990s. It’s known for its catchy songs, dynamic choreography, and fusion of musical genres like hip-hop, pop, and slower sentimental songs called ballads. “By blending these genres, they come up with new songs that sound very fresh and feel very new but also familiar,” explains Tamar Herman, a K-Pop columnist for Billboard magazine. 

Mixing genres helps make the music relatable, even when it’s in a foreign language. For example, you might like a group’s pop song because of the smooth vocals, while your friend—who is a diehard hip-hop fan—might like it because of the rap, Herman explains.  

Ilgan Sports/Multi-Bits via Getty Images

EXID

Social media also helped boost K-Pop’s popularity. BTS shines on social. They’ve won Top Social Artist at the Billboard Music Awards the past two years in a row, beating out pop stars like Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, and Selena Gomez.

The future of K-Pop looks bright, says Herman. With the overwhelming support of fans, Herman expects to see more artists on the charts and more concerts in the U.S. And if the instantly sold-out tickets for BTS’s stadium show in New York City last October are any indicator, K-Pop is here to stay.

Using Measures of Center
Watch a math video about measures of center.

Find the mean, median, and mode of the sizes of former and current K-Pop groups listed below to analyze the data set. Round means to the nearest whole number. Record your work and answers on our answer sheet.

What are the mean, median, and mode of members in these male K-Pop groups?

What are the mean, median, and mode of members in these female K-Pop groups?

What are the mean, median, and mode of all the groups combined?

How do the trends in group size differ between male and female groups?

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Using Measures of Center

Statistics & Probability

Watch a math video about measures of center.

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Text-to-Speech