Graphing and Describing Data in Everyday Life
Discussion
Initial Post Instructions
Suppose that you have two sets of data to work with. The first set is a list of all the injuries that were seen in a clinic in a month’s time. The second set contains data on the number of minutes that each patient spent in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. You can make assumptions about other information or variables that are included in each data set.
For each data set, propose your idea of how best to represent the key information. To organize your data would you choose to use a frequency table, a cumulative frequency table, or a relative frequency table? Why?
What type of graph would you use to display the organized data from each frequency distribution? What would be shown on each of the axes for each graph?
Follow-Up Post Instructions
Respond to at least one peer. Further the dialogue by providing more information and clarification.
Consider how different distributions might affect the different graphs. How might other variables affect the graphs? How could graphs be made to be biased? If a graph were biased, how might you change it to guard against that bias?
Writing Requirements
Minimum of 2 posts (1 initial & 1 follow-up)
APA format for in-text citations and list of references
Grading
This activity will be graded using the Discussion Grading Rubric. Please review the following link:
Link (webpage): Discussion Guidelines
Course Outcomes
CO 3: Given scenarios supported by qualitative and quantitative data, summarize, organize, display, and interpret data through the application of graphs generated with the use of technology.
reply to this post below
Hello class and professor,
For each data set, propose your idea of how best to represent the key information. To organize your data would you choose to use a frequency table, a cumulative frequency table, or a relative frequency table? Why?
For the list of injuries seen in the clinic each day, a frequency table would be best to show the number of occurrences of each type of injury. This helps in identifying the most common injuries and their frequency over time. For the data on the number of minutes spent in the waiting room each day, a cumulative table could be useful to show the accumulation of waiting time over the course of the month. this could reveal trend in waiting times, such as peak hours or days with longer wait times.
What type of graph would you use to display the organized data from each frequency distribution? What would be shown on each of the axes for each graph?
For the list of injuries seen in the clinic a bar graph would be suitable to display the frequency distribution. On the x-axis you would list the type of injuries and on the y-axis, you would plot you would plot the frequency or count of each injury type. For the data on the number of minutes spent in the waiting room, a histogram would be appropriate to display the frequency distribution. On the x-axis you would have bins representing ranges of waiting times and the y-axis you would plot the frequency or count of observations falling within each bin.
references,
Lind, D. A., Marchal, W. G., & Wathen, S. A. (2019). Basic statistics for business & economics. McGraw-Hill.
Mishra, P., Pandey, C. M., Singh, U., Gupta, A., Sahu, C., & Keshri, A. (2019). Descriptive statistics and normality tests for statistical data. Annals of cardiac anaesthesia, 22(1), 67-72.
