Question

A supermarket is testing brands of microwave popcorn. For each brand, they recorded the percentage of corn kernels in a package that popped in the recommended cooking time. Let A be the data set of percentages listed below.

A=91,94,89,93,87,92,86,87,92,91
The supermarket then realized they missed a brand. When the new brand was cooked, only 74% of its kernels popped.
a. Including the percentage for the package where the least kernels popped causes the center of the data to increase.
b. Including the percentage for the package where the least kernels popped causes the spread of the data to decrease.
c. The mean of A is the same as the mean of B.
d. The median of A is the same as the median of B.

Answer 1

Including the percentage for the package where the least kernels popped affects the center and spread of the data, but not the median.

Step-by-step explanation:

a. Including the percentage for the package where the least kernels popped decreases the center of the data. This is because adding a lower value to the data set brings the overall average down.

b. Including the percentage for the package where the least kernels popped increases the spread of the data. This is because adding a lower value to the data set increases the range of values.

c. The mean of A is not the same as the mean of B, since adding the new brand's data will affect the overall mean.

d. The median of A is the same as the median of B, since the median is not affected by the addition of a new data point.