Chapter 8. Calculating and plotting statistics

This chapter covers

Calculating statistics over lists of samples
Drawing statistical plots on the graphscreen
Fitting lines to data sets

Statistics is the study of data sets. The purpose of statistics is to take large amounts of data and organize, summarize, and visualize it to make it easier to interpret (as in figure 8.1). For example, you can measure the heights of 800 students, but until you figure out the average height and graph how many people are each height, those 800 samples are just a mass of numbers. Because statistics deals with calculating and graphing sets of numbers, it makes sense that a graphing calculator would be particularly handy for statistics. In this chapter, you’ll learn all about your calculator’s statistics tools.

Figure 8.1. A taste of visualizing statistics on your calculator. On the left, a box-and-whisker plot (top) and a modified box-andwhisker plot (bottom) of finishing times from a 1- mile race. On the right, a histogram of SAT scores from one class.

Chapter 8. Calculating and plotting statistics

This chapter covers

Figure 8.1. A taste of visualizing statistics on your calculator. On the left, a box-and-whisker plot (top) and a modified box-andwhisker plot (bottom) of finishing times from a 1- mile race. On the right, a histogram of SAT scores from one class.

8.1. Working with data lists

8.2. Calculating properties of data

8.3. Statistical plots

8.4. Regression: fitting lines to data

8.5. Summary