Question

A marine biologist was interested in seeing the relationship of a baby manatee's weight and age. She gathered data and wanted to construct a graph to display the data in order to observe the change in weight per year.

Is a scatter plot or a line graph more appropriate to construct for the data, given the context of the problem? Explain.

A scatter plot, because it would show the association or relationship between two variables

A scatter plot, because it would show how a variable changes over time between each data point given

A line graph, because it would show the association or relationship between two variables

A line graph, because it would show how a variable changes over time between each data point given

Answer 1

A) A scatter plot, because it would show the association or relationship between two variables. A scatter plot is the most appropriate type of graph to show the relationship between two continuous variables, such as weight and age in this case. The biologist can plot each manatee's weight against its age to see if there is any pattern or association between the two variables.


A line graph, on the other hand, is more appropriate for showing how a single variable changes over time.