Summarizing Data and Describing Relationships Using Technology

Summarizing data numerically is important. For example, a business might be interested in the
average price of a certain item or the median wage of its employees. In addition, one sometimes
wants to determine if there is a linear relation between two variables. For example, the business
might want to see if there is a linear relationship between sales and price.
For this discussion, you will collect quantitative data from the Internet, StatCrunch, or
the CD that comes with the textbook. Then, you will compute summary statistics of your data, or
you will study a linear relationship between two sets of data. 

1. Use the same method of collecting 50 or more quantitative data items that you used in the
Module 1 discussion. Collect 50 or more quantitative data. You may even use your data from
Module 1, if you wish.
a.) Using StatCrunch, compute the following five summary statistics:

o
 Sample mean
 median sample
 standard deviation
 range
 interquartile range (IQR)
The Technology Step-by-Step box at the end of Section 3.1 (page 130 in your textbook)
explains how to do summary statistics using StatCrunch.
b.) Then, construct a histogram, as in Module 1. Recall, the Technology Step-by-
Step box at the end of Section 2.2 (before the end-of-section problems) explains how to
do a histogram using StatCrunch. This time, you do not have to construct a histogram
with sliders.

Make sure your data set is large enough (50 items).

c.) Then, answer the following two questions:
o
o Looking at your data and the histogram, which measure of central tendency (mean
or median) best describes the “center” of the distribution?

o Looking at your data and the histogram, which measure (sample standard
deviation, range, or interquartile range) best describes the “dispersion” of the
distribution?