Bo x- an d - W h isk er Plot s
S- I D. A. 2 Use st at ist ics ap p ro p riat e t o t he... dat a
distribution to compare center... and spread... of two
or more different data sets. Also N-Q.A.1, S-ID.A.1
MP 1, MP 2, M P3, MP 4, MP 6
Co m m o n Co r e St at e St a n d a r d s
Object ives To make and interpret box-and-whisker plots
To find quartiles and percentiles
Get t in g Read y! « X C
What criteria are
you going t o use t o
decid e?
MATHEMATICAL
PRA CTI CES
Su p p o se y o u a r e m o vi n g t o a n e w t o w n an d a r e l o o k i n g f o r a w a r m
clim at e. You can choose between M orrell or Glenville. Based on the
averag e monthly t em p erat ures below, which town would you choose?
How did you d ecid e?
Average Monthly Temperatures
Lesso n
Vocabulary
quartile
interquartile
range
box-and-whisker
plot
percent ile
percentile rank
Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul A u g Se p t Oc t Nov Dec
Morrell 56 57 60 68 74 82 83 85 79 70 62 55
Glenville 58 62 66 70 76 78 81 8 4 77 73 68 63
In the Solve It, you may have looked at different parts of each data set in order to
compare the two data sets.
| Es s e n t i a l U n d e r s t a n d i n g Separating data into subsets is a useful way to
summarize and compare data sets.
Quar t i l es are values that divide a data set into four equal parts. The median (or second
quartile, Q2) separates the data into upper and lower halves. The first quartile (Qj) is
the median of the lower half of the data. The third quartile (Q3) is the median of the
upper half of the data. The interquartile range is the difference between the third and
first quartiles.
11 12 13 21 2 3 2 5
t I I t
minimum Qi median (Q 2 ) Q 3 maximum
[— i n t er q u ar t i l e r an g e = Q 3 - Q 1 - * j
For a set of data that has an odd number of values, you do not include the median in
either half when finding the first and third quartiles.
746 Ch ap t er 12 Data Analysis and Probability