What went wrong?
The following
are examples of errors in the analysis of an example problem. In each case,
explain what went wrong. (We strongly suggest that you try to figure these out
for yourself before looking at the solutions.)
1) Suppose a
student gave the following graph of the amount of calories for several Chinese
foods (from Center for Science in the
public Interest, tabulated by the Philadelphia
Inquirer on March 23, 1995) and then said that the distribution was fairly
even, with Hunan tofu being a “middle value” of the distribution.
How would you
respond?
2) For the
Chinese food example, suppose a student gave the following graph:
and then said
that the distribution was symmetric, with
3) Suppose
that a student produces the following dotplot and verbal description of the
distances (in miles) of the 72 hikes described in the book Day Hikes in San Luis Obispo:
Verbal
description: The data are skewed to the left.
Most are at the value 2.0. The
spread is from .6 to 9.5. There are no
outliers, and there is no granularity.
How would you
respond?