Top 50 NFL Players and Interception Yards (2015 season)

By: Sadie and Taylor

For our project, we chose to quantitative data on the interception yards of the Top 50 NFL players of the
2015 NFL season. The website we used to collect our data was the NFL website with all the statistics of
the players. Here is the link we used to collect our data.
http://www.nfl.com/stats/categorystats?tabSeq=0&season=2015&seasonType=REG&statisticCategory=INTERCEP
TIONS&conference=null&d-447263-p=1

Stem-and-leaf plot
Interception Yards for Top 50 NFL Players (2015)
Stem|Leaf
0|0456
1|3445569
2|012224568
3|13669
4|055788
5|04
6|778
7|267
8|49
9|236 Key: 2|0 represents 20 yards
10 | 4
11 | 0 5
12 | 3
13 | 6
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23 |
24 |
25 |
26 |
27 |
28 | 0
Stem and Leaf Plot:
When creating the stem and leaf plot, we found that we had one outlier. There’s a gap between 136 and
280. We found that the range with the farthest yards was in the 20s. The stem and leaf plot makes it easier
to see how many players were in each group because we can count the numbers.

Histogram

Histogram:
Our histogram shows that most of the players had the shortest amount of interception yards. The graph is
skewed right. Most of the players had interception yards between 0-42.86 yards. Our histogram shows a
wide distribution of data because it contains seven classes, giving the viewer a larger group of data to
observe.
 Relative Frequency Histogram

Relative Frequency Histogram:

The relative frequency histogram is the same as the histogram; however, we used the relative frequencies
on the vertical axis. The highest relative frequency in the 0-42.86 range equaled 52% of our data, which is
more than half of our data. In addition, this graph is similar to the histogram and is skewed to the right.

Frequency Table
Interception Yards for Top 50 NFL Players (2015)

Limit Frequency Relative Frequency Cumulative Frequency

0-42.86 26 26/50 = .52 26
42.86-85.71 14 14/50 = .28 40
85.71-128.57 8 8/50 = .16 48
128.57-171.43 1 1/50 = .02 49
171.43-214.29 0 0/50 = 0 49
214.29-257.14 0 0/50 = 0 49
257.14-300.00 1 1/50 = .02 50
Frequency Table:
Our frequency tables shows all the specific data we collected. It helps us to see how players were in each
group for interception yards. It makes it easier for us to see what category everyone was in. It also
includes all of the information in the other data sets, but combined in one table.
Ogive

Ogive:
In our ogive, we noticed that the yards were consistent around 50 for the cumulative frequency. It
increased at first then stayed consistent as the yards increased. This is normal because the cumulative
frequency is the previous frequencies added up and graph on a line.
 Pie Chart

Pie Chart:
Our pie chart shows that more than half of our collected data was in the 42.86-85.71 range. Meaning most
players ran between that range of yards. We also noticed that two of our groups obtained the exact same
percent. This chart is one of the hardest graphs to gain information from because it is categorized into four
groups.
 Time Series Graph

Time Series Graph:

We chose to make a time series graph on Reggie Nelson’s interception yards over the past 12 years. We
noticed that his yards consistently went up and down each time. He had two peaks in his career and we
noticed our graph was bimodal according to the data. The down points in our graph helps us to conclude
that Reggie was either hurt or having a rough season.
 Pareto Chart

Pareto Chart:
In our pareto chart, we noticed that Marcus Peters was our outlier. He had 280 interception yards in the
2015 NFL season. In addition, the chart shows that most of the players were between the 0-100 range.

In conclusion, our data showed the interception yards of the Top 50 NFL players of the 2015 season. Our
best graph was the pareto chart because you could see the difference of yards between the players easily.
On the other hand, our pie chart was only separated into four categories, which makes it hard to
distinguish where and how far the players went in yards. It isn’t separated into seven classes like the other
graphs which shows more data and is more accurate. Overall, we found that the interception yards were
between 0-48 based on our data; however, there was one outlier with an average of 280 yards.