Question

Calculate the value of an outlier by using the 1.5xIQR rule. Using the number of minutes per call in last month's cell phone bill, Eddie calculated the upper quartile to be 23 minutes and the lower quartile to be 15 minutes. Any value less than _____ minutes is an outlier.

a) 12

b) 5

c) 8

d) 3

Answer 1

To identify outlier values less than the lower quartile in a dataset, subtract 1.5 times the IQR from the lower quartile. In this case, the lower outlier boundary is 3 minutes. Option D is the correct answer.

Step-by-step explanation:

To calculate the value of an outlier using the 1.5xIQR rule, you first need to find the Interquartile Range (IQR) by subtracting the lower quartile (Q1) from the upper quartile (Q3).

In the scenario provided, the upper quartile is 23 minutes and the lower quartile is 15 minutes, so the IQR is 23 - 15 = 8 minutes. Then, to find the lower boundary for outliers, you subtract 1.5 times the IQR from Q1. Therefore, the calculation is 15 - (1.5 × 8), which equals 15 - 12 = 3 minutes.

Any value less than 3 minutes is considered an outlier. Therefore, the correct option is d) 3.