Sterling Hite

MATH-1040-407
Term Project Part 3

Findings
The results of the graphs for the variable Total candies in each bag suggest that the shape of
the distribution is normal, starting out low, climbing to a maximum, and then dropping to a low again in
a bell-like shape that is near symmetrical. Because of the nature of production I would imagine that the
data values to be similar with some highs and some lows, with the bulk of the values in the middle. So
the graphs did reflect what I expected to see. The overall class data does agree with the data from my
bag of candy. For example, the total candies from my bag is 60 and the class mean is 59.4 with a
standard deviation of 5.0 and 4.6, respectively.

Categorical and Quantitative Data

Categorical data consists of groups, names, or descriptive data. Graphs that would be an
effective use for categorical data might be a pie chart or a Pareto chart. These are good graphs for this
type of data because they show a good representation of groups, or categories. A box plot or a stem and
leaf would not make sense as graphs for categorical data because these graphs require numerical data
to be calculated.
Quantitative data is data that is numerical and can be organized in meaningful ways and measured.
Most graphs work for quantitative data, but a couple of effective graphs would be a scatter plot and a
boxplot. A scatter plot is useful for comparing two different sets of data values. A boxplot is a great

graph in that it shows a lot of information about the data such as: shape and distribution, the mean and
median, the 5-number summary values, and more.
Calculating the mean or standard deviation makes perfect sense when using numerical data,
quantitative, but does not make any sense at all when looking at qualitative data. Categorical data is
placed into groups like race, sex, or zip codes and it doesnt really make sense to try to find the mean of
any of those.