Word Bank - Interpreting Shape, Center and Spread

Data Distributions

When we draw a histogram of a data set, the data set will have a visual distribution that is symmetric, skewed left, skewed right, or multimodal. Please note there are other distributions and they are not just limited to the four mentioned here.

Data Points, Data values, and Observations

These all refer to the actual numbers in a table

Interquartile Range (IQR)

The middle 50% of the data given by IQR = Q3-Q1

Mean

The arithmetic average of a data set.

Measures of Center

The mean, median, and mode are all measures of center. They are terms to describe the “center” of a data set. They may not be values/points within that data set.

Median

The middle value in an ordered array of data

Mode

The value in a data set that occurs most frequently

Multimodal

The data will look like it has multiple peaks

Outlier

A data value that falls outside of the shape of the distribution

Range

Distance between the largest and smallest values of a data set; Range: Maximum data value - Minimum data value

Skewed Left

The majority of the data falls on the right side of the distribution

Skewed Right

The majority of the data falls on the left side of the distribution

Spread

The way a data set “spreads” or varies throughout its values. The measures of spread are the range, Interquartile range, and standard deviation

Standard Deviation

A measure of how much we might expect a member of a data set to typically vary from the mean 

Symmetric

A vertical line drawn through the center of the graph would give mirror images of the data on either side