Department of Mathematics, Statistics
and Computer Science
Wim Ruitenburg's Fall 2012 MATH 1300-101
Last updated: October 2012
Comments and suggestions: Email wimr@mscs.mu.edu
Book, chapter 14 on descriptive statistics
We consider ways of displaying data sets consisting of single numbers.
Examples are
- Bar graphs.
- Pie charts (thank you, Florence Nightingale, and someone earlier).
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).
- Box plots (page 540).
- Variance and standard deviation (page 541).
In class we discussed some special ways of computing mean, variance, and
standard deviation.
Example Problem(s)
- Recommended problems from Chapter 14 of the book:
7, 9, 11
- Recommended problems from Chapter 14 of the book:
13, 23, 31, 47