Meghan Little

Math 1040 Online Class

Term Project Part 3- Individual Work
1. The shape of the distribution of the variable Total Candies in Each Bag is not exactly a
normal distribution. It is skewed slightly right. Most of the values are between 55 and 65
candies per bag. These values reflect what I expected to see. I expected that most of the bags
would contain the same amount of Skittles, and that there would be very little variation. There
was some variation, but for the most part, most of the bags contained a similar amount. In my
bag, I found 63 candies. There were 61 bags total for the class sample (including mine) and the
class mean was 59.8 candies per bag. My count of 63 candies was close to the class mean of
59.8 candies per bag.

2. Quantitative data is data which are measurable or quantifiable in some way. Examples of
quantitative data are height, length, weight, etc. Quantitative data is continuous. Categorical
data is data which are grouped according to similar properties, rather than numerical data. The
data is discrete, not continuous. An example of categorical data is eye color or language
spoken. In quantitative data we focus more on the quantities, and in categorical data we focus
more on the qualities. The types of graphs that make sense with quantitative data are
histograms, stem and leaf plots, dot plots and scatterplots. Histograms use bars in their display
to indicate frequencies of certain values or classes. They help us to make sense of frequencies
of numerical data sets. Stem and Leaf plots provide a way to show large data sets in a
condensed form. The stem is used for the larger section of the data, and the leaf is to indicate
frequencies of the data that fall into the larger section. Dot plots visually represent numerical
data sets with dots representing the highest point in every class of data. Scatterplots use x and y

axes to show how data changes over time, a very useful way to see how numerical frequencies
change.
The types of graphs that make sense with categorical data are Pareto diagrams or bar graphs and
pie charts. Pareto diagrams contain a bar that indicates the frequency of each category.
The categories are ranked by importance, so that more important categories are emphasized. Pie
charts take each categorical data set and arrange them in the shape of a pie, with each section
larger or smaller to indicate the relative frequency of that category.
The calculations that make sense with quantitative data are mean, median and mode, among
many others. Quantitative data can be sorted using the ordinal, interval and ratio level of
measurement. These measurements use quantities to sort numerically based on rankings and
relative numerical values, which work well with quantitative data sets.
Categorical data can be sorted using the nominal level of measurement, because this level of
focuses on categories that can't be arranged in order. The focus is more on the qualities and