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In the last activity, we explored how there is power in numbers, and using more than one histogram can give you a better understanding of the situation. However, is generating more than one histogram necessary all the time? If so, where does it end? How far do you have to go? Are there situations where one is enough?
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If you are capturing data for a specific event at a specific time, the one histogram is enough. Also, histograms that span time intervals may give you what you need. However, remember Monday’s histogram from the last learning activity? The histogram spanned a time interval, but it was not enough to make a totally informed decision.
If you’re capturing data for a process that expands over a specified period of time, then multiple histograms may be necessary.
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EXAMPLE SCENARIO: You are now a college physics instructor. You want to see the number of student scores in a percentile range for the second exam of the semester. Your grading assistant generates the following histogram for you. Is this histogram sufficient, or do you need additional ones?
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EXAMPLE SCENARIO: You are now a manager of a manufacturing company and want to see last week’s hourly production of a new product to forecast numbers for the rest of the year. The quality department generates the following histograms. Do you need all these or would one suffice?
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If capturing data for a specific event at a specific time, then one histogram should be adequate. If capturing data for a process that runs over a period of time, then multiple histograms are probably necessary to get the most complete story of the data
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CRITICAL THINKING: For the two scenarios in this learning activity, are histograms the most appropriate way to represent the data or would another graph style work better? Why or why not?
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