Unit 10 Statistics 6SP 1,2,3
Analyze Data
Essential Question Choices:
2. Why is data collected?
3. Why is variability important in statistics?
Dot plot
What can you say about this data?
Forecasts use statistics
What is the mode of the temperatures?
What is the mean of the temperatures in this city?
Resources to check out!
Create a statistical Question
Mrs. Nolen's Math Class 601/602
Email: rnolen@schools.nyc.gov
Location: I.S. 77, Seneca Avenue, NY
Phone: 555 555 5555
Vocabulary Words to know!
What is a Measure of Variability?
Measures of variability tell us how spread out the scores in a distribution are.
EX: Suppose you got a 75 out of 100 on a math test, and you know that the mean score in the class was 65. Now you know you've done better than average, so that's a good thing, but you don't know how much better than average you have done. For example, if most people scored at or near the mean, then your score may actually be quite high in comparison to all of the others.
On the other hand, if the scores were quite spread out, then your score may be little better than average.
A. Concept of variability
A distribution of scores has high variability if the scores are widely distributed around a mean. A distribution of scores has low variability if most of the scores lie fairly close to the mean. From the test example above, with an average of 65: a distribution with high variability would include scores like 15, 98, 72, 27, 4, etc. A distribution with low variability would include scores like 66, 62, 67, 64, etc.
B. Range
The range of a distribution is defined as the largest score minus the lowest score. For example, in the distribution (2, 9, 5, 7, 4, 3), the range would be 9 - 2 = 7. As you can see, the range only takes into consideration 2 numbers: the highest and the lowest. For this reason, it is a rather rough measure of variability.
- What is Distribution? an arrangement of values of a variable showing their frequency of occurrence