Question

The table below shows data from a survey about the amount of time students spend doing homework each week. The students were either in college or in high school:

High Low Q1 Q3 IQR Median Mean σ
College 50 6 8.5 17 8.5 12 15.4 11.7
High School 28 3 4.5 15 10.5 11 10.5 5.8

Which of the choices below best describes how to measure the spread of this data?
Both spreads are best described with the IQR.
Both spreads are best described with the standard deviation.
The college spread is best described by the IQR. The high school spread is best described by the standard deviation.
The college spread is best described by the standard deviation. The high school spread is best described by the IQR.

Answer 1

@Vocaloid

Answer 2

any ideas? look for any outliers in either the college/high school data set

for data sets with strong outliers we would prefer to use the IQR

for data sets without outliers we would prefer to use the standard dev.

Answer 3

well 50 and 28 are pretty strong outliers

Answer 4

that's a good start

another clue is the difference between mean and median

if mean and median are close together that means the data set probably contains few outliers

so for the college set the median and mean are 12 and 15.4 which is much further apart than the high school median and mean (11 and 10.5)

Answer 5

so the college set is much more spread out/contains more outliers than the high school set

with that being said what might the solution be?

Answer 6

c?

Answer 7

good

Answer 8

thanks