Answer to Question #199725 in Statistics and Probability for Niju Thomas Rajan

Question

A bored carpenter counts the actual number of nails in 10 boxes of nails and records his findings as: 230, 235, 302, 287, 312, 323, 265, 319, 342, and 298. What can we say about the shape of the distribution of the number of nails?

Answer 1

Arrange in ascending order:

230, 235, 265, 287, 298, 302, 312, 319, 323, 342

Mean (Average):

Sum of all observations / Total no. of observations

( 230 + 235 + 265 + 287 + 298 + 302 + 312 + 319 + 323 + 342 ) / 10 = 291.3

Median:

In case of even no. of observations, median is the average of two middle observations.

( 298 + 302 ) / 2 = 300

Here mean of data is less than the median.

So, distribution of data will be skewed to the left.