September 21, 2015

Describing Location in a Distribution Percentiles

Where does each data point fall RELATIVE to the rest of the data? What is the distribution of height in this class?

1) Percentiles (relative cumulative frequency) What percentile are you?

2) Z Scores (for all distributions)

3) Normal Distribution? Z Scores can give you percentiles

Z Scores Look at the heights of this class from our data sheet.

Used to compare data from different distributions.

1) What percentile would you be in this data?
Tells us how many standard deviations away from the mean a data value is.

2) How does your height compare in this data?

How many standard deviations above or below the mean are you?
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Example: 4 runners run the New York marathon. We wish to determine

which runner had a faster time relative to each age group.
Joanie scored a 93 on the history test and Chachi had a score of 81. If the mean
score was an 85 and the standard deviation of 3.62. What are each of their z-
scores? What does this tell us?
Steve David Walt Julie
Runner
(25-35) (36-50) (50+) (25-35)
Time 2 hr 45 min 2 hr 59 min 3 hr 39 min 3 hr 1 min

Mean 3 hr 2 min 3 hr 23 4 hr 27 min 3 hr 31 min

Standard
16 min 19 28 22
Deviation
If Potsie scored an 81 on the biology exam can we compare them? Given the mean
of 75 and standard deviation of 2.1 for the biology exam, what does that mean in
comparison with Joanie and Chachi? What percentile does each person fall into?

Who was the best runner with respect to their age group?

Density Curves
Review of steps for exploring data:
· always on or above the horizontal axis
1. Graph the data (stemplot, histogram, timeplot)
· has an area of EXACTLY 1 underneath it

· Describes the overall pattern of a distribution.

2. SOCS:
a. Shape (unimodal? Symmetrical?) · The area under the curve and above any interval of values on the horizontal
b. Outliers axis is the proportion of all observation that fall in that interval.
c. Center (mean, median values)
d. Spread (standard deviation, IQR) · No data is EXACTLY described by a density curve. (approximation that
allows us to make statistical decisions).
3. Find position of data relative to the distribution.
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