Department of Mathematics, Statistics
and Computer Science
Wim Ruitenburg's Fall 2009 MATH 1300-101
Book, chapter 14 on descriptive statistics
We consider ways of displaying data sets consisting of single numbers.
Examples are
- Bar graphs.
- Pie charts (thanks you, Florence Nightingale).
- Box plots (although not really discussed in class).
There are a few examples of poor or worse use of presentation of statistical
data.
Examples are
- Clipping a bar graph (bottom of page 528).
- Mistaken conclusions from a pie chart (bottom of page 530).
Numerical summaries of data include
- Mean (average) (pages 533-534).
- Percentile (page 536).
- Median (page 537).
- Variance and standard deviation (page 541).
In class we discussed some special ways of computing mean, variance, and
standard deviation.
Last updated: October 2009
Comments & suggestions:
wimr@mscs.mu.edu