Putting Graphs in Context In Exercises 5–8, m...

Question

Putting Graphs in Context In Exercises 5–8, match the plot with the description of the sample.

a. Times (in minutes) it takes a sample of employees to drive to work

b. Grade point averages of a sample of students with finance majors

c. Top speeds (in miles per hour) of a sample of high-performance sports cars

d. Ages (in years) of a sample of residents of a retirement home

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Accepted Answer

Hello everyone. Let's take a look at this question together. Which of the following best describes the plot below. And here we have a dot plot that we need to determine is it answer choice A, life spans in years of a sample of turtles at a wildlife sanctuary. Answer choice B, the number of books read last year by a sample of college students. Answer choice C, heights in inches of professional basketball players, or answer choice D daily high temperatures in degrees Fahrenheit, for a week in a tropical location. So, in order to solve this question, we have to identify. The characteristics of the dot plot to determine which answer choice best describes it. And so the dot plot exhibits the following characteristics, starting with that it has an X-axis range of 60 to 90. The dot plot also exhibits clustering, as most data points fall between 70 and 85, with a peak around 80. The dot plot also exhibits symmetry, as it is roughly bell-shaped. And the dot plot has a distribution shape of a single peak, so it is unimodal and fairly symmetric. And lastly, based on context clues, we can identify that the values are numerical and in the 60 to 90 range. And using these characteristics, we can determine which answer choice makes the most sense as the description for our dot plot, starting with answer choice A, which says life spans in years of a sample of turtles at a wildlife sanctuary. Well, we know that turtle lifespans can vary. But some turtles live well beyond 90 years, with many reaching over 100 years, and since this plot's maximum value is 90, with a concentration below that, it does not make sense for this to be the description of our dot plot. So answer choice A is incorrect. Then we have answer choice B, which says the number of books read last year by a sample of college students. Well, based on our dot plot, we know the range, which is 60 through 90, is too high for book counts, as it's uncommon for a student to read over 60 books in a year, and this would likely be a distribution closer to 0 through 20. Therefore, answer choice B is also not a description of our dot plot, which makes answer choice B incorrect as well. Then we have answer choice C, which is heights in inches of professional basketball players. Well, we know that professional basketball players are usually 6'3 to 7 ft, or about 75 to 84 inches, and This distribution peaks around 80 inches, which aligns well with that range. Therefore, the heights in inches of professional basketball players does in fact make sense as a description for our dot plot. So answer choice C is the correct answer. And lastly, we know that answer choice D is incorrect, as answer choice D, which says daily high temperatures in degrees Fahrenheit, or a week in a tropical location, does not make sense as a description for our dot plot, since Tropical locations do have highs in the 80s and sometimes touching 90, but this distribution covers too wide of a range for just one week, as the temperature highs don't vary by 20 to 30 degrees over a week in tropical climates. So only answer choice C is the correct answer. I hope you found this video to be helpful. Thank you and goodbye.

Key Concepts

Descriptive Statistics

Data Visualization

Sampling

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