Question

A group of students was asked about the number of times they had been water-skiing. The data is shown in the histogram.

A histogram titled Water Skiing Trips. The x-axis is labeled Number of Times Water Skiing and has intervals of 1 to 5, 6 to 10, 11 to 15, 16 to 20, and 21 to 25. The y-axis is labeled Frequency and starts at 0 with tick marks every 1 units up to 6. There is a shaded bar for 6 to 10 that stops at 3, for 11 to 15 that stops at 5, for 16 to 20 that stops at 6, and for 21 to 25 that stops at 1. There is no shaded bar for the 1 to 5 interval.
Which of the following best describes the spread of the data?

Explain its meaning in this situation.

The data has a possible range of 19, which is a wide spread. This might mean that the most common number of water-skiing trips is 10.
The data has a possible range of 19, which is a wide spread. This might mean that there is a large difference in the number of water-skiing trips taken by the students.
The data has a possible range of 6, which is a narrow spread. This could mean that most of the students have taken a similar number of water-skiing trips.
The data has a range of 6, which is a narrow spread. This might mean that the most common number of water-skiing trips was 6.

Answer 1

(b) The data has a possible range of 19, which is a wide spread. This might mean that there is a large difference in the number of water-skiing trips taken by the students.

Explanation:

You want the best description of the spread of data shown in the histogram.

Spread

The least data value that can be represented on the chart is 6. The greatest value the chart can represent is 25. This means the possible range of data values is ...

range = max - min = 25 -6 = 19

This possible spread of 19 might mean there is a large difference in the number of trips taken by students, choice B.

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Additional comment

The range must be at least 21 -10 = 11 trips, not an answer choice. The most common number appears to be in the range 16-20, so will likely not be 10. (This is referred to as the "mode range", as we cannot tell from the grouped data what the actual mode is.)

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