Question

1. when drilling for oil wells, researchers have to take into account how much oil each well will eventually produce before deciding if they should drill in a specific location. in the table below, there are the total amounts of oil recovered from 38 wells in the michigan basin, in thousands of barrels.

a) what measures would you use to describe the center and spread of these data? justify your answer.

Explanation:

Step1: Identify measures for center and spread

For center, mean and median are common measures. For spread, range, inter - quartile range (IQR), and standard deviation are common. The data has no extreme outliers visible from the dot - plot. So, the mean can be used to describe the center as it takes into account all data values, and the standard deviation can be used to describe the spread as it measures the average distance of each data point from the mean.

Step2: Justify the choice

Since the distribution seems relatively symmetric (no strong skew) from the dot - plot, mean and standard deviation are appropriate. Mean gives the average amount of oil recovered and standard deviation gives an idea of how much the amounts of oil recovered vary from the average.

Answer:

To describe the center, the mean can be used. To describe the spread, the standard deviation can be used. Justification: The distribution appears relatively symmetric from the dot - plot, so mean and standard deviation are appropriate measures.