Directions: Please fill in Part I as you study the Reading Assignment. Once you finish the reading, complete the questions on Part II. You may use your notes, the key, and the help videos. Be sure to take this completed assignment to your group meeting where you can ask and help answer questions on this assignment.

Problems

Part I: Use the information in the reading assignment to complete these questions.

  1. Match the following statistical terms with their appropriate definitions.
    ___ Shape of the distribution
    ___ Center of the distribution
    ___ Spread of the distribution

    1. Average, mean, median, mode
    2. Standard deviation, variance
    3. Symmetric, bell-shaped, skewed right, and skewed left, uniform, unimodal, bimodal, or multimodal

  2. Define standard deviation.

  3. Before your Group Preparation session, explain “standard deviation” to a roommate, family member, or other person who has not studied statistics. Describe the experience. How did you explain this idea?

  4. Define sample variance.

  5. Provide a definition and/or a brief description of the following terms.

Percentiles -

Quartiles -

Five-number summary -

Boxplot -

Part II:

  1. The following data set are data on stock performance of specific companies. Find the mean, standard deviation and sample size for each of the companies A-E. Click on the link to access this data set. (MysteryInvestmentOpportunities)

  2. Make a histogram of the stock performance data for each of the companies. Paste your graphs here.

  3. Compare the results you obtained with the others in your group. Describe the differences and similarities between the different graphs.

  4. If you were saving for retirement, which of these five companies would be the most attractive investment? Justify your answer.

  5. Create a table to compute the standard deviation “by hand” using the data Severe Bird Flu Data, available on the wiki page, (Lesson 03 Describing Quantitative Data; Shape, Center and Spread).