Two research teams collected data to study consistency in two types of physical…
MATHEMATICS · Multi-part · A Level · Mathematics · Data presentation and interpretation · Data presentation and interpretation
Problem
Two research teams collected data to study consistency in two types of physical measurements.
The first team measured the lengths (in cm) of 8 plant leaves:
42, 44, 43, 45, 41, 46, 42, 44
The second team measured the weights (in g) of 8 identical-looking stones:
30, 31, 32, 29, 81, 30, 31, 30
Answer the following.
(i) State the meaning of the term (a) range and (b) standard deviation for an ungrouped data set.
(ii) Without doing any calculation, explain why comparing only the ranges of the two sets may give a misleading idea of their variability.
(iii) Explain with reasons why the standard deviation is a more suitable measure for comparing the consistency of the two teams’ observations.