Interpreting data: boxplots and tables

Introduction

This unit is concerned with two main topics. In Section 1, you will learn about another kind of graphical display, the boxplot. Boxplots are particularly useful for assessing quickly the location, dispersion, and symmetry or skewness of a set of data, and for making comparisons of these features in two or more data sets. The other topic, is that of dealing with data presented in tabular form. You are, no doubt, familiar with such tables: they are common in the media and in reports and other documents. It is not always straightforward to see at first glance just what information a table of data is providing, and it often helps to carry out certain calculations and/or to draw appropriate graphs to make this clearer.

This unit is an adapted extract from the Open University course Analysing data (M248)

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