Question

Jeremy loves snowboarding. His favorite stunt is catching big air and jumping off the ramp while holding on to the snowboard. Jeremy did this 20 times and recorded the heights (in meters) he achieved in each attempt. He wants to know whether his data set has negative, positive, or zero skew.

{18, 23, 15, 16, 15, 17, 22, 16, 19, 11, 24, 14, 12, 16, 20, 18, 14, 13, 21, 11}
Jeremy's data set shows ____ skew.

Answer 1

To be able to determine the type of skew exhibited by the distribution of the heights he achieved in each of his attempt we arrange the distribution in order and obtain the frequency of each data in the distribution. Height (meters): 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 Frequency: 2, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 Calculating the mean gives (11 x 2 + 12 + 13 + 14 x 2 + 15 x 2 + 16 x 3 + 17 + 18 x 2 + 19 + 20 + 21 + 22 + 23 + 24) / 20 = 335 / 20 = 16.75 Since there are more higher frequencies to the left of the mean we conclude that the distribution exhibits a positive skew.