Interpreting quartiles

The  exercise appears under the 6th grade (U.S.) Math Mission. This exercise helps to understand the meaning of the quartiles and other values from the five number summary.

Types of Problems
There are two types of problems in this exercise:


 * 1) Find the percentage that answers the question: This problem provides a contextual situation that involves a data set pictured in a boxplot. The student is asked to determine what percentage of data values fall between particular numbers.Intqua1.png
 * 2) Find the number that answers the question: This problem provides a contextual situation that involves a data set pictured in a boxplot. The student is asked to determine what number represents a correct "cut-off" to answer the question asked.Intqua2.png

Strategies
Knowledge of statistical vocabulary and the ability to do basic statistical calculations are encouraged to ensure success on this exercise.
 * 1) The quartiles and the median (which could be viewed as a second quartile) split the data set into 25 percent "chunks."
 * 2) The five number summary (minimum, first quartile, median, third quartile and maximum) are the 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% percentile for a data set.
 * 3) A picture can be memorized with the values above to increase efficiency and accuracy on this exercise.

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) Quartiles are useful for creating boxplots.