Question

*PLEASE HELP 100 POINTS* The table shows the weights of several kittens.

Describe how the outlier affects the mean. Then
use the data to answer the statistical question,
"What is the weight of a typical kitten?"
Kitten Weights (pounds)
4.5 5.7 4.4 4.45 5.5
5.6 47 4.9 7.25 5
Hint: Create a dot plot to determine the outlier.

Answer 1

5.5 pounds

Explanation:

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From the dot plot, we can see that there is one outlier in the dataset, with a weight of 47 pounds.

To answer the statistical question, "What is the weight of a typical kitten?" we need to determine a measure of central tendency that represents the typical weight of the kittens. However, because there is an outlier in the dataset, the mean is not a good measure of central tendency to use in this case. This is because the outlier is significantly larger than the other values in the dataset and would skew the mean towards a higher value.

Instead, we can use the median as a measure of central tendency for this dataset. The median is the middle value when the data is arranged in order. In this case, the median is 5.5 pounds, which represents a typical weight for a kitten in this dataset, since it is not affected by the outlier.