math project Essay

Submitted By samkmurphy
Words: 358
Pages: 2

Report: Distribution of Students’ Weights

The data for this report was collected through student survey, performed as a part of a homework assignment in Fall 2013. The individuals in this data set are 56 students of Math 141-04 and 05, who were asked to respond to 22 questions. Analysis of the data found that the answers were neither uniform nor complete, which demonstrates the issue with instructions understanding or design. The weight of students, measured in pounds, was chosen to be a variable in this report. Two students did not answer about the weight; therefore the responses of only 54 students were accounted for in the dataset (see Appendix 1, Table 1).
This variable has numerical values and units of measurements and can be classified as quantitative. A histogram was chosen as a statistical graph to better show the distribution of the variable. The responses (in pounds) for weight question were organized into 8 classes and then the individuals were counted for each class.
Based on the sorted data (see Appendix 2, Table 3) a histogram was created by using Microsoft Excel program.

Figure 1: Histogram of the distribution of students’ weights

The graph shows, that the distribution is not symmetric and is skewed to the right as the right side of the histogram extends much farther out than the left side. The midpoint of the distribution is 180 pounds. The spread is from 100 pounds to 260 pounds. There are no visible outliers.
As the distribution is not symmetrical and skewed to the right the most appropriate numerical measures of center and spread are five number summaries. The raw data was entered into the calculator and the following values were obtained: minimum-100 pounds, first quartile-130 pounds, Median-150 pounds, third quartile-165 pounds and maximum- 250 pounds. These values