Big Ideas Math: Modeling Real Life, Grade 8
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Big Ideas Math: Modeling Real Life, Grade 8 View details
4. Choosing a Data Display
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Exercise 16 Page 262

What types of data displays do you know?

Example Solution: A dot plot, see solution.

Practice makes perfect
Let's recall the types of data displays we can use to describe a data set.
Data Display When Do We Use It? Key Phrase
Pictograph To show data using pictures Pictures
Dot Plot To show the number of times each value occurs in a data set Times each value occurs
Stem-and-Leaf Plot To show how ordered numerical data are distributed Distribution of ordered values
Box-and-Whisker Plot To show the variability of a data set by using quartiles Variability
Circle Graph To show data as parts of a whole Parts of a whole
Bar Graph To show frequencies of data values in specific categories Category frequency
Histogram To show frequencies of data values in intervals of the same size Frequency and intervals
Line Graph To show how data change over time Change over time
Scatter Plot To show the relationship between two data sets using ordered pairs plotted in a coordinate plane Relationship of two data sets, coordinate plane

Now, we want to choose an appropriate data display for showing a mode of a data set. Recall that a mode is the most common value in a data set. Therefore, we should use a dot plot because it shows how many times each value occurs. Let's take a look at the example dot plot.

Dot plot on the number line, with 5 data points stacked on 1, 4 on 2, 6 on 3, 4 on 4, 5 on 5, and 5 on 6.

Here, the mode, or the most common value, is 3 because we have the greatest number of dots above this value.