Math 134 3.1 Wksht wCalculator Demo
Chapter 3 Section 1
Activity - Describing the Shape of a Distribution
A pdf of this activity is linked at the bottom of this page.
Follow along with your calculator and the following video for the complete activity.
Lesson on calculating mean and median and using relative position of such to determine shape of distribution.
The following table shows birth weights (in lbs) of 50 randomly sampled babies
| 5.8 | 7.4 | 9.2 | 7.0 | 8.5 | 7.6 |
| 7.9 | 7.8 | 7.9 | 7.7 | 9.0 | 7.1 |
| 8.7 | 7.2 | 6.1 | 7.2 | 7.1 | 7.2 |
| 7.9 | 5.9 | 7.0 | 7.8 | 7.2 | 7.5 |
| 7.3 | 6.4 | 7.4 | 8.2 | 9.1 | 7.3 |
| 9.4 | 6.8 | 7.0 | 8.1 | 8.0 | 7.5 |
| 7.3 | 6.9 | 6.9 | 6.4 | 7.8 | 8.7 |
| 7.1 | 7.0 | 7.0 | 7.4 | 8.2 | 7.2 |
| 7.6 | 6.7 |
a) Use your calculator to find the mean and the median birth weight
Mean:
Median:
b) Based on the relative position of the mean and median to each other, describe the shape of the distribution
Mean ____ Median (˂, ≈, or ˃)
Based on this, the shape should be __________________________
c) Draw a histogram below to graphically represent this data
d) Which measure of central tendency, based on the shape of our distribution, would be the more appropriate - the mean or the median?
To download a pdf of this worksheet