2022-NSML-Meet-1-Freshmen-Statistics

Basic Statistics: Written Topic

2022 Freshman Meet 1

The freshmen written topic for meet 1:

Sections: 1.3 and 2.1-2.5 in the online Introductory Statistics (OpenStax) text.

Measures of central tendency (mean, median, and mode), histograms, box-and-whisker plots, stem and leaf plots, range, interquartile range (IQR), potential outliers. No variance. No standard deviation. No comparison of sample and population means.

Here is a chart showing the association of topics with sections in the text.

Section	Topics
1.3	Frequency, relative and cumulative
2.1	Stem and leaf graphs ("plots" in our standard usage). Contestants are assumed to be able to read line and bar plots .
2.2	Histograms (not "frequency polygons" or "time series graphs")
2.3	Quartile, percentile, median, interquartile range (IQR), potential outliers(!)
2.4	Box plots.
2.5	Mean, mode, grouped frequency tables. Excluded: population mean (x vs mu)

Example exercises:

1.11 and 1.16 (pages 49-50), 1.80-1.86 (pages 56-59)
Chapter 2: there are practice exercises (pages 127-134) and homework (pages 139-151). Not all of the questions are perfect, skim before you use them.

Comments:

Note that there are solutions at the very end of the chapter.
Spread = range, used in e.g. question 89. Example: "what is the spread of the second quartile?"

Miscellaneous comments on Chapter 2 questions:

92: the mean is being taken over the countries, so it is not actually (# underweight children) / (# children).
86-89: interpret a box plot

Although the source mentions it, the chapter questions do not cover identifying potential outliers. ("Find the data points which are more than 1.5 * IQR from the box.")