Eve owns a woodworking company called Timber Designs. She just got an order for maple kitchen cabinets, so she takes inventory of the lengths of maple boards she has in the warehouse. This histogram shows the distribution of maple board lengths.

Question

Complete the sentences.
The distribution of board lengths is best described as
. So, the standard deviation
an appropriate measure of variation.

Answer 1

The distribution of board lengths is best described as skewed (or symmetric, depending on the histogram). So, the standard deviation may not be an appropriate measure of variation.

If the distribution is skewed, the interquartile range (IQR) might be a better measure of variation because it is less affected by outliers. If the distribution is symmetric, then the standard deviation would be appropriate.