Question

Can anyone help?

Answer 1

@Jadeishere

Answer 2

do you know how to do this or no?

Answer 3

Okay, do you know how to calculate mean?

Answer 4

Add up the numbers, divide by how many numbers there are and get the answer?

Answer 5

Yes.
Do you know what Mean Absolute Deviation is, because this is very important to the question.

Answer 6

no

Answer 7

It's basically how far apart the numbers can get, from page to page.
So the Mean Absolute Deviation of the Literature book is about 14, whereas the Social studies book is about 10

Answer 8

Mean Absolute Deviation is how far off the data can be from the actual mean of the collective data.

Answer 9

\[78.5 \pm 14.2\]\[68.7 \pm 9.8\]

Answer 10

?

Answer 11

So the numbers of words on every page can vary, basically

Answer 12

Between 78.5 - 14.2, all the way to 78.5 + 14.2.

Answer 13

I'm so lost right now

Answer 14

it just looks like you switched operations

Answer 15

Yes, I did. Do you know what the plus/minus sign is?

Answer 16

add and subtract?

Answer 17

Yes, it shows that you need to do both to get two answers

Answer 18

hmm when i do that do i just add the totals together?

Answer 19

@Jadeishere
I don't think you are quite correct in your interpretation of mean absolute deviation.

It does not place a LIMIT on the distance from the mean.

Answer 20

Then please take over, math is most definitely not my strongest subject, and I'm going off of a memory of 8th grade. That was 5 years ago

Answer 21

I'm afraid I cannot - stats is not my strong point either - I just didn't want this to progress on a wrong assertion

Answer 22

i hate statistics :(

Answer 23

You may find some useful notes here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_absolute_deviation#Mean_absolute_deviation_around_the_mean

Answer 24

@agent0smith @mathmate
I believe that most people don't really enjoy statistics... except for the people who tend to be exceedingly great at it

Answer 25

But your Google. You know everything.

Answer 26

Might have time later.

Answer 27

There are precise methods to compare two sample means given the sample or population \(standard~deviation\) of each sample, and by assuming normal distribution if the sample is large enough.

In this case, we are given mean of Language arts much greater than that of social studies, while the median is the reverse, this constitutes an abnormal phenomenon. Given that the Socience science median is close to its mean of social studies, and the relatively smaller mean deviation, we can conclude that there are probably outliers in the Language arts data, which also explains the higher absolute deviation.

Given the presence of possible outliers, any serious comparison of the two datasets would not be very meaningful.

The answer to the question would depend a lot on the materials you have studied in class, namely whether your class is learning about introduction to statistics (qualitatively) or about statistical analysis (quantitative).

For the former, no mathematical justification is required. My comment is that comparing means of two (relatively) small samples is unreliable given that
1. the variability of at least one of the datasets (language arts)
2. the fact that the median of Language arts is actually below that of social sciences.

If you are studying statistics quantitatively, I invite you to post some of the methods of comparing sample means that you have studied for our information before we go further.

I will leave it to you to make your answer choice, and I invite other helpers to add their comments.