Question

Monica was hired to analyze the salaries of the 685 employees of a company. The company's leadership wants to ensure that people of different races and genders are not paid differently for the same work. The first step in Monica's project is to create a data display that clearly shows these data points: - the median salary - the lowest salary - the highest salary A sample of the data is shown below. $51,745; $54,512; $57,322; $57,750; $64,820; $67,500; $68,448; $72,020; $74,485; $81,167 Which graph should Monica choose? Explain your reasoning by completing the sentences. A dot plot ..... A box plot ..... A histogram ..... So, Monica should create a Choose ..... to display the data.

Answer 1

To choose the most appropriate graph for displaying Monica's salary analysis data, we can evaluate the three options based on the criteria of clearly showing the median salary, lowest salary, and highest salary.

A dot plot is a simple way to display individual data points. However, it may not effectively communicate the median, lowest, and highest salaries in a compact and clear way, especially with a larger dataset.

A box plot (or box-and-whisker plot) is specifically designed to show the distribution of a dataset, highlighting the median, quartiles, and the minimum and maximum values (lowest and highest salaries). This type of plot will allow Monica to display the range of salaries at a glance and quickly identify the median, making it easy to spot differences among various groups.

A histogram is useful for showing the frequency distribution of data, but it does not directly highlight specific statistical measures such as the median or the exact lowest and highest values.

So, Monica should create a box plot to display the data. It will effectively showcase the median salary, the lowest salary, and the highest salary, allowing for a clear visual comparison of salaries among different groups while addressing the company's concerns about pay equity.