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7.12: Applications of Box-and-Whisker Plots

Difficulty Level: Basic Created by: CK-12
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Practice Applications of Box-and-Whisker Plots
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Estimated9 minsto complete
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Suppose you survey 1500 students in three counties and collect the number of brothers and sisters each one has. How would you represent this data? What tools would you use to organize this data? How would you find the median number of siblings?

Watch This

First watch this video to learn about creating box-and-whisker plots with a calculator.

Then watch this video to see some examples.

Guidance

The TI-83 or TI-84 can be used to create a box-and whisker plot. In the following examples, the TI-83 is used. In later Concepts, key strokes using the TI-84 will be presented to you. The five-number summary values can be determined by using the TRACE feature and the left and right arrows of the calculator or by pressing

STAT
and using 1-Var Stats on the CALC menu. The TRACE feature gives the individual values of the five-number summary one at a time.

Example A

The following numbers represent the number of siblings in each family for 15 randomly selected students:

4, 1, 2, 2, 5, 3, 4, 2, 6, 4, 6, 1, 7, 8, 4

Use technology to construct a box-and-whisker plot to display the data.

A box-and-whisker plot can be created with a TI-83 calculator as shown below:

Note that when creating a box-and-whisker plot with a TI calculator, you don't have to actually sort the data. The calculator will sort the data automatically when creating the box-and-whisker plot.

Example B

List the five-number summary values for the data in Example A.

The five–number summary can be obtained from the calculator in 2 ways.

a. The following results are obtained by simply using the TRACE feature and the left and right arrows:

The values at the bottom of each screen are the five-number summary.

b. The second method involves pressing

STAT
and using 1-Var Stats on the CALC menu for L1:

Example C

Construct a box-and-whisker plot using technology to represent the average number of sick days used by 9 employees of a large industrial plant. The numbers of sick days are as follows:

393118342522322322

What are the values for the five-number summary?

The screens below show the five-number summary:

The values for the five-number summary are as follows:

Min. Value 18\begin{align*}\rightarrow 18\end{align*}

Q122\begin{align*}Q_1 \rightarrow 22\end{align*}

Med 25\begin{align*}\rightarrow 25\end{align*}

Q333\begin{align*}Q_3 \rightarrow 33\end{align*}

Max. Value 39\begin{align*}\rightarrow 39\end{align*}

This can be verified by pressing

STAT
and using 1-Var Stats on the CALC menu for L1.

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Guided Practice

The following data represents the number of flat-screen televisions assembled at a local electronics company for a sample of 28 days:

48555144594947455156505753554749515456544750535255515948

Using technology, construct a box-and-whisker plot for the data. What are the values for the five-number summary?

First press

STAT
and choose Edit on the EDIT menu. Enter the data values into L1, and then press
2ND
Y=
. Press
ENTER
and make sure that your settings are as follows. Note that for Type, the middle graph in the second row is selected.

Now press

WINDOW
and make sure that your settings are as shown below:

Finally, press

GRAPH
. The following screens show the steps necessary to determine the five-number summary using the TI-83:

The values for the five-number summary are as shown below:

Min. Value 44\begin{align*}\rightarrow 44\end{align*}

Q148.5\begin{align*}Q_1 \rightarrow 48.5\end{align*}

Med 51\begin{align*}\rightarrow 51\end{align*}

Q355\begin{align*}Q_3 \rightarrow 55\end{align*}

Max. Value 59\begin{align*}\rightarrow 59\end{align*}

This can be verified by pressing

STAT
and using 1-Var Stats on the CALC menu for L1.

Explore More

For each of the following box-and-whisker plots, determine the five-number summary and give one possible data set that could produce the box-and-whisker plot.

Vocabulary Language: English Spanish

trace feature

trace feature

The trace feature is a feature on the TI calculator that gives individual values to the five number summary of the box-and-whisker plot.

Basic

Feb 24, 2012

Jul 22, 2015