Module Three | Assignment 1

Descriptive Statistics Applet Activity

The purpose of this activity is to introduce you to the basic idea that descriptive statistics depend in part on the distribution of the data. As always, use this link (http://bcs.wiley.com/he-bcs/Books?action=resource&bcsId=10008&itemId=1118172140&resourceId=39868 Links to an external site.) to navigate to the applets and select the Descriptive Statistics applet.

Activity:

On the top right of the applet, there is a box that says “Show instructions” – make sure that box is checked and read through the prompt. The basic idea is that you will rotate through different datasets and try to guess descriptive statistics based on the distribution of the data.
For this activity, make sure to select “Histogram” as the display type, then click “Random sample” until you find a data display that looks interesting to you. Check “Guess” next to Mean and Median and move the respective lines around to guess where you think the mean and median are for this dataset.
Once you have your guesses in place, check “Actual” next to Mean and Median and compare your guesses with the actual, computed statistics. How close were you? If your guesses were quite different from the actual statistics, why do you think this was?
Uncheck the “Actual” boxes, click “Random sample” again until you find a different-looking distribution, then repeat this process. Walk through this guess, compare to actual, think about why they might be different process at least 10 times, noting patterns that you see.

As you work with these different distributions of data, keep in mind the following questions:

When do you notice the mean is greater than the median?
When do you notice the mean is less than the median?
When do you notice the mean and median and almost the same?
When do you notice the mean and median are closer to the middle of the distribution?