3. Describing Data Numerically

Drawing a Box-and-Whisker Plot In Exercises 15–18,

(b) draw a box-and-whisker plot that represents the data set.

4 7 7 5 2 9 7 6 8 5 8 4 1 5 2 8 7 6 6 9

Speed Reading Jessica enrolled in a course that promised to increase her reading speed. To help judge the effectiveness of the course, Jessica measured the number of words per minute she could read prior to enrolling in the course. She obtained the following five-number summary: 110 140 157 173 205. Use this information to draw a boxplot of the reading speed.

Boxplots. In Exercises 29–32, use the given data to construct a boxplot and identify the 5-number summary.

Blood Pressure Measurements Fourteen different second-year medical students at Bellevue Hospital measured the blood pressure of the same person. The systolic readings (mm Hg) are listed below.

138 130 135 140 120 125 120 130 130 144 143 140 130 150

Exam Scores After giving a statistics exam, Professor Dang determined the following five-number summary for her class results: 60 68 77 89 98. Use this information to draw a boxplot of the exam scores.

[DATA] Putting It Together: Paternal Smoking It is well-documented that active maternal smoking during pregnancy is associated with lower-birth-weight babies. Researchers wanted to determine if there is a relationship between paternal smoking habits and birth weight. The researchers administered a questionnaire to each parent of newborn infants. One question asked whether the individual smoked regularly. Because the survey was administered within 15 days of birth, it was assumed that any regular smokers were also regular smokers during pregnancy. Birth weights for the babies (in grams) of nonsmoking mothers were obtained and divided into two groups, nonsmoking fathers and smoking fathers. The given data are representative of the data collected by the researchers. The researchers concluded that the birth weight of babies whose father smoked was less than the birth weight of babies whose father did not smoke.

g. Draw a side-by-side boxplot of the data. Does the side-by-side boxplot confirm the conclusions of the study?

In a boxplot, if the median is to the left of the center of the box and the right whisker is substantially longer than the left whisker, the distribution is skewed ______________.

[DATA] Old Faithful In Problem 26 from Section 3.1, we drew a histogram of the length of eruption of California’s Old Faithful geyser and found that the distribution is symmetric. Draw a boxplot of these data. Use the boxplot and quartiles to confirm the distribution is symmetric. For convenience, the data are displayed again.

"[DATA] Putting It Together: Paternal Smoking It is well-documented that active maternal smoking during pregnancy is associated with lower-birth-weight babies. Researchers wanted to determine if there is a relationship between paternal smoking habits and birth weight. The researchers administered a questionnaire to each parent of newborn infants. One question asked whether the individual smoked regularly. Because the survey was administered within 15 days of birth, it was assumed that any regular smokers were also regular smokers during pregnancy. Birth weights for the babies (in grams) of nonsmoking mothers were obtained and divided into two groups, nonsmoking fathers and smoking fathers. The given data are representative of the data collected by the researchers. The researchers concluded that the birth weight of babies whose father smoked was less than the birth weight of babies whose father did not smoke.

f. Interpret the first quartile for both the nonsmoker and smoker group."