Exercise 3 Page 257

We want to show the change of the number of hits — visits — for our school's new website during the given 5 months. The goal is to see if we can do that by using a dot plot.

Month	Hits
August	250
September	320
October	485
November	650
December	925

Recall that a dot plot is a data display that shows the number of times each value occurs in a data set on a number line. This means that a dot plot shows frequency similarly to a histogram.

However, the dot plot does not show the number of hits each month or how this number changes over time. Therefore, this data display is not appropriate for this situation.

Extra

Types of Data Displays

Let's recall the types of data displays we can use to describe a data set.

Data Display	When Do We Use It?
Pictograph	To show data using pictures
Dot Plot	To show the number of times each value occurs in a data set
Stem-and-Leaf Plot	To show how ordered numerical data are distributed
Box-and-Whisker Plot	To show the variability of a data set by using quartiles
Circle Graph	To show data as parts of a whole
Bar Graph	To show frequencies of data values in specific categories
Histogram	To show frequencies of data values in intervals of the same size
Line Graph	To show how data change over time
Scatter Plot	To show the relationship between two data sets using ordered pairs plotted in a coordinate plane