MATH 225N Week 2 Discussion Graphing and Describing Data in Everyday Life
University:
Chamberlain University
MATH 225N Week 2 Discussion Graphing and Describing Data in Everyday Life
Paper Instructions
Initial Post Instructions
Suppose that you have two sets of data to work with. The first set is a list of all the injuries that were seen in a clinic in a month’s time. The second set contains data on the number of minutes that each patient spent in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. You can make assumptions about other information or variables that are included in each data set.
For each data set, propose your idea of how best to represent the key information. To organize your data would you choose to use a frequency table, a cumulative frequency table, or a relative frequency table? Why?
What type of graph would you use to display the organized data from each frequency distribution? What would be shown on each of the axes for each graph?
Follow-Up Post Instructions
Respond to at least two peers or one peer and the instructor. Further the dialogue by providing more information and clarification.
Consider how different distributions might affect the different graphs. How might other variables affect the graphs? How could graphs be made to be biased? If a graph were biased, how might you change it to guard against that bias?
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Sample Answer
For the first question, I created a frequency table of a list of injuries one might see in a walk-in clinic over the past month.
Rather than sort alphabetically, I sorted from highest number of injuries to lowest and then created a horizontal bar graph with the types of injuries on the y axis simply as a matter of preference, since either is acceptable in a bar graph (Holmes, Illowsky and Dean, 2018)
It might be interesting to see where the data falls over the course of many months using a cumulative review of the frequency of the various injuries. I would expect bee stings to increase during warmer weather when people spend more time outside, therefore the clinic would have data to be well prepared to treat those injuries. A histogram wouldn’t be useful here, as the labels are categorical, not quantitative (Stattrek, 2020).
For the second question, Let’s assume the following wait time in minutes for a given day 5, 5, 5, 5, 9, 10, 10, 15, 15, 30, 30, 35, 35, 40, 45, 60, 65, 70, 70, 75. First, I created a frequency table, but using the math rules taught us this week in the Knewton Lesson on frequency tables (Chamberlain University, 2020), I really didn’t care for the groups of times created, so I created a second table using increments of 15 minutes since the frequency outcome didn’t change
I like a pie chart best to show that while most people (45%) only had a wait of less than 15 minutes, still another 45% had waits of more than 30 minutes. This pie chart makes it easy to see where improvement needs to be made.
- Elaine
https //stattrek.com/statistics/charts/histogram.aspx?Tutorial=APLinks to an external site. - Holmes, A., Illowsky, B., & Dean, S. (2018). Introductory business statistics. OpenStax
- Chamberlain University, (2020). MATH225. Week 2 Knewton Lesson Frequency Tables (online lesson). Downers Grove, IL. Adtalem.
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