Minitab assignment

Chapter 11 Minitab Express

The activity includes three questions. Using the data in the textbook dataset, answer the

following questions:

Question 1:

Create a rate for active primary care physicians (C10) using the 2012 population (C2) in each

county, a rate for social security beneficiaries (C12) using 2012 population (C2) in each county,

and a rate for public school expenditure (C18) using 2012 population (C2) in each county. Use a

base number of 10,000 for active care physicians, a base number of 100 for social security

beneficiaries and public school expenditures.

To create a formula in a column, click on Data, Formula

.

I will use Public school faculty (C17) and Live Births (C58). I will divide by the 2012 population

(C2) and put the new variables in C79 and C80. Notice that I use a base number of 1000 for

each calculation.

The first few rows are shown below:

Question 2:

Using the variables primary care physician rate and social security beneficiaries’ rate from

question 1.

 Produce a histogram and boxplot for each variable. Experiment with creating additional displays.

 Which display(s) are most useful to include in a report summarizing these variables?

Use the command: graph, histogram (or boxplot), select the variable.

Notice the Navigator tool on the left side, you can move between the outputs using this tool.

Here is a histogram and boxplot for the faculty rate variable. I can discuss the distribution (unimodal, bimodal, etc.), symmetry, skewness, gaps, outliers, unusual features. What can you see on the histogram that you cannot see on the boxplot? What can you tell from the boxplot that you cannot see on the histogram?

See below in question 3 for an alternative method to get the graphic displays.

Question 3:

Using the variables public school expenditure variable from question 1 and Average SAT total

(use as provided in the dataset):

 Calculate the following statistical information: Mode, Median, Mean, Minimum, Maximum, Range, First Quartile (Q1), Third Quartile (Q3), IQR, and standard deviation.

 What do these statistics tell you about the similarities and differences between the two distributions?

I will use the Faculty rate variable I created in question 1. Use the command: Statistics,

Describe, Descriptive Statistics, select the variable(s) [Note: if you want to calculate statistics on

more than one variable change All data are in one column to Data are in more than one

column], and the desired statistics (click on Statistics). I also selected N missing and N total.

Notice the Display option; you can select histograms, boxplots from this tab.

Here is the output.

You will be comparing the two distributions using the summary statistics. What will you look at?

You can compare the centers of the distributions, the spread, etc.