We are asked how a frequency table may be useful for a store owner to determine their busiest business hours.
Frequency Tables in General
The frequency of a particular range of values is the number of data values in this range. Let's determine the frequency of the interval 0-4 for the following data set.
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5 & 6 & 9 & 1 & 2
9 & 9 & 1 & 2 & 0
3 & 3 & 7 & 1 & 8
Note that there are exactly 8 data values that fall within the range of 0-4. Based on the frequencies of particular intervals, we can create a frequency table that groups sets of data values and shows the frequency for each group. Let's make the table for our data.
Interval
Frequency
0-4
8
5-9
7
Given Situation
Recalling all the important concepts, let's get back to the given situation by introducing Mark. Mark is a store owner that has recently received a lot of complaints about prolonged service times in his store.
The store owner wants to determine which hours are the busiest during the day. To do so, he asked his employee to count the number of customers in each business hour. The results are presented in a frequency table.
Business Hour
Frequency
9:00AM -10:00AM
8
10:00AM -11:00AM
11
11:00AM -12:00PM
7
12:00PM-1:00AM
13
1:00AM-2:00PM
18
2:00PM-3:00PM
25
3:00PM-4:00PM
47
4:00PM-5:00PM
31
Mark notes that most customers visit the store between 3:00PM and 4:00PM Also, we can see that during the second half of the day — from 1:00AM to 5:00PM — the hours are the busiest.
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Busiest Hour:& 3:00PM-4:00PM
Busiest Time:& 1:00AM-5:00PM
Based on the results, Mark concludes that he should increase the number of workers during the busiest hour. Additionally, the store may employ more part-time employees that would work from 1:00AM to 5:00PM.
