(dumb it down and make it look like an 8th grader made it) A manager at a retail store was interested in the spending habits of customers during the holiday season. The manager surveyed a random group of customers and recorded the number of items that they bought and the total amount of money they spent at the store. The table displays the information collected on the customers.

Question

Number of Items 1 5 3 9 7 4 3 1 6 10 4 8
Amount Spent (in dollars) 38 82 143 160 114 102 81 85 95 220 52 140

Part A: Would a scatter plot or line graph be more appropriate for displaying and describing this set of data? Explain. (2 points)

Part B: Determine whether the association is linear or nonlinear, strong or weak, and positive or negative and use it to describe the relationship between the number of items purchased and the total amount of money spent. (2 points)

Answer 1

Part A:

A scatter plot would be more appropriate for showing this set of data. This is because we have two different sets of numbers – the number of items and the amount spent. A scatter plot can show how these two sets of numbers relate to each other, so we can see if there's a pattern. A line graph is better for showing changes over time, but here we’re just looking at how much people spend based on what they buy.

Part B:

The association between the number of items purchased and the total amount of money spent seems to be linear and strong. This means that as the number of items goes up, the amount they spend tends to go up, too. In simpler terms, when customers buy more stuff, they usually pay more money. So, it's a positive relationship because both numbers increase together!