Question

Curtis was curious about the average height of the different types of plants in his flower and vegetable gardens, so he measured each of his plants. This data set shows the heights of the flowers in his garden, in inches: . This data set shows the heights of the vegetable plants in his garden, in inches: .

(a) What is the mean absolute deviation (MAD) of the flower height data? Show your work.

(b) What is the mean absolute deviation (MAD) of the vegetable height data? Show your work.

(c) Use the data to compare the two gardens. What does the MAD indicate about the variability between flower and vegetable plant heights?

Please help me I'm giving out 14 points, please help

Answer 1

Anwser:

To determine the mean absolute deviation, first calculate the mean. Find the sum of the values: 8 plus 6 plus 9 plus 6 plus 14 plus 9 plus 5 plus 7 equals 64. Then divide the sum by the number of values: 64 divided by 8 equals 8. The mean is 8.

Next, find the distance of each value from the mean :

|8-8|=0 |6-8|=2 |9-8|=1 |6-8|=2 |14-8|=6 |9-8|=1 |5-8|=3 |7-8|=1

0 plus 2 plus 1 plus 2 plus 6 plus 1 plus 3 plus 1 equals 16. Then divide the sum of absolute deviations by the number of data values: 16 divided by 8 equals 2. The MAD of the data is 2.

Since the MAD for the vegetable plant data is so much higher than the MAD for the flower data, this indicates that the heights of the vegetable plants vary more than the heights of the flowers