Question

A male nursing home patient has his pulse taken every day. His pulse readings ( beats per minute) over a 1-month period are presented in the following table:

72 56 68 78 72 70

70 60 72 68 74 76

64 70 62 74 72 78

76 74 72 68 70 72

68 74 70 64 70 72

a) Make a suitable graph for this data.

b) Determine the mean, median, and mode. Be sure to include units in your answers.

c) Based on this data, which measure(s) - the mean, median, or mode-best describe(s) the man's typical pulse rate? Explain your reasoning.

Answer 1

a)

Here, we make the Histogram as :

b)

Mode is the value which is repeated most number of times.

In this case, Mode = 72

So,

Mean = 70.24 beats per minute

Median = 72 beats per minute

Mode = 72 beats per minute

c)

Since there are outliers in the data and the distribution seems to be left skewed, Median would describe the man's typical pulse rate best. Median is not affected by outliers