Question

Madelynn asked people how many hours they spend reading per week. Then, she summarized her data. MEAN: 8.5 hours IQR: 6 hours MEDIAN: 7 hours Q1: 5 hours Q3: 11 hours Which option would be the LOWEST outlier?

Answer 1

To find the lowest outlier in Madelynn's reading time data, calculate Q1 - 1.5 * IQR, which results in a negative number. Since negative reading time isn't possible, the lowest outlier would be the smallest positive number below this theoretical bound.

Step-by-step explanation:

To find the lowest outlier of a data set, we can use the interquartile range (IQR). The IQR is the difference between the third quartile (Q3) and the first quartile (Q1). In Madelynn's data, the IQR is 6 hours because Q3 is 11 hours and Q1 is 5 hours. We can determine outliers by calculating the bounds below and above which data points would be considered outliers.

The formula for the lower bound is Q1 - 1.5 * IQR. Plugging in the given values:
Lower Bound = 5 hours - (1.5 * 6 hours) = 5 hours - 9 hours = -4 hours.
Since we cannot have negative hours, we will consider the lowest value greater than 0 that is below this lower bound as the lowest outlier.

Therefore, any data point less than 0 (which is not possible in this context, so we'd look for the smallest positive number lower than the bound) would be considered the lowest outlier in Madelynn's data set.