Math 225N Week 2 Discussion, Graphing And Describing Data In Everyday Life

MATH 225N WEEK 2 DISCUSSION, GRAPHING AND DESCRIBING DATA IN EVERYDAY LIFE Suppose that you have two sets of data to work with. The first set is a list of all the injuries that were seen in a clinic in a month's time. The second set contains data on the number of minutes that each patient spent in the waiting room of a doctor's office. You can make assumptions about other information or variables that are included in each data set. For each data set, propose your idea of how best to represent the key information. To organize your data would you choose to use a frequency table, a cumulative frequency table, or a relative frequency table? Why? What type of graph would you use to display the organized data from each frequency distribution? What would be shown on each of the axes for each graph? I have two sets of data I need to organize. The first set of data is a list of all of the injuries that were seen in a clinic in a month’s time. For this, I would utilize a frequency table. According to our lesson, in a frequency table “the first column consists of the categories or classes, and the second column is a frequency count for each record in the data set pertaining to that category or class” (Chamberlain, 2019). My first column would list all of the injuries that were seen in the clinic that month (sprains, cut/lacerations, burns, pressure injuries, fall injuries), and the second column would be relative numerical values. The reason I would choose this is because I am collecting basic information and need a basic picture. A bar chart would be good for the data, and it is quite easy to read/understand. According to our text, bar graphs consist of bars that are separated from each other (Holmes et al., 2017). In my bar graph, the type of injury would be represented on the x-axis and number of occurrence/frequencies on the y-axis. The second contains data on the number of minutes that each patient spent in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. For this, I would also use a frequency table. I would separate the data into two categories: - number/range of minutes in the waiting room and frequency of patients. I think a good representation of this would be with the use of a line graph. With the line graph, the y axis would have my frequency points and the x axis would represent the number of minutes each patient spent in the waiting room in increments of 5 minutes ranging from 0-40 minutes. Then, the frequency points would be connected using line segments (Holmes et al., 2017). However, one of the downfalls of using a line graph is that because lines bind plotted points into a single line, the graph can be misinterpreted upon first glance as incorporating a trend in the data, even when there is no trending associated with the data (Peebles & Ali, 2015). If it were to present as confusing, I would utilize a bar chart. Chamberlain College of Nursing. (2019). Math-225N Week 2 Lesson: Graphing and Describing Data. [Online lesson]. Downers Grove, IL: DeVry Education Group. Holmes, A., Dean, S., Illowsky, B., & Hadley, K. (2017). Introductory Business Statistics. Retrieved from Peebles, D., & Ali, N. (2015). Expert interpretation of bar and line graphs: the role of graphicacy in reducing the effect of graph format. Frontiers in psychology, 6, 1673. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01673