Shape of distributions

The  exercise appears under the 6th grade (U.S.) Math Mission. This exercise analyzes the skewness of various data sets in different presentations.

Types of Problems
There is one type of problem in this exercise:


 * 1) Determine the skew of the data: This problem has a display of data in some statistical table or graph. The student is asked to observe the data presented and see if it is skewed left or right, or if the data is roughly symmetric.Sod1.png

Strategies
Knowledge of statistical vocabulary and the ability to do basic statistical calculations are encouraged to ensure success on this exercise.
 * 1) The data can be presented in charts, lists, histograms or dot plots.
 * 2) The skew of the data is the direction in which the tail extends.
 * 3) If there is no noticeable or significant tail the data is considered to be roughly symmetric.

Real-life Applications

 * 1) Data and statistics appear in news reports and in the media every day.
 * 2) Many of the problems in this exercise could be viewed as real-life applications.
 * 3) Statistics can be seen more frequently than calculus in every day life.
 * 4) The standard unimodal, roughly symmetric data set is the normal model, and it has many applications in business and sciences (social and physical).