Question

A developmental psychologist was interested in how long it took toddlers to pick up a particular attractive new toy. Fifty toddlers were studied, and all of them eventually picked up the toy. In the research article, she provided the following table for the approximate numbers of minutes it took.

Minutes f %
1 1 2
2 2 4
3 7 14
4 9 18
5 8 16
6 7 14
7 5 10
8 3 6
9 1 2
10 7 14
a. Using this table as an example, explain the idea of a frequency table to a person who has never had a course in statistics.
b. Explain the general meaning of the pattern of results.

Answer 1

A frequency table is a way to organize data by displaying the count or frequency of each value or category in a dataset. In this example, the pattern of results shows that the majority of toddlers took 3 minutes to pick up the toy, followed by 2 minutes and 4 minutes. The distribution is skewed, with a smaller number of toddlers taking longer or shorter amounts of time.

Step-by-step explanation:

A frequency table is a way to organize data by displaying the count or frequency of each value or category in a dataset. It provides a summary of how often each value occurs and helps to identify patterns or trends in the data. In this example, the table shows the number of minutes it took for toddlers to pick up a toy, along with the frequency and percentage of toddlers who took that amount of time.

The pattern of results in this study shows that the majority of toddlers (54%) took 3 minutes to pick up the toy, followed by 2 minutes (14%) and 4 minutes (18%). The distribution is skewed, with a smaller number of toddlers taking longer or shorter amounts of time. This suggests that the majority of toddlers quickly grasped and picked up the attractive new toy, while a smaller proportion took more or less time.