Descriptive Statistic Paper

The Atlanta Public Schools is experiencing low test scores and students failing the Georgia High School Graduation Test in English, Math, Science, and Social Studies. There are many decisions the school system must make to eliminate a low percentage of test scores and failure. This paper will focus on formatting information gathered on the test scores. By examining the central tendencies of the data, Team Solutions will first calculate the measures of central tendencies and dispersion. The team will then display this statistical data using graphic and tabular techniques to enhance the decision making process.

Measures of Central Tendency

Measures of central tendency are measures which are representative of a sample or population. Central tendency provide the means for one to be more objective when collecting data or making inferences. These measures distinguish the center or middle of a set of values and best characterize the distribution. The central tendency of a distribution is an estimate of the “center” of a distribution of values. There are three major types of estimates of central tendency: Mean, Median, and Mode. The mean or average is the most common used method of describing central tendency and can be used for all data. The Median is the score found at the exact middle of the set of values. The mode is the most frequently occurring value in the set of scores (Lind, Marchal, Wathem, 2005).

Understanding how the data is dispersed is essential in interpreting the measures of central tendencies. Without the measure of dispersion the central tendencies could be very misleading. The measure of dispersion will describe the spread of the data and the variation around the central value. There are two measures of dispersion, variance (range) and standard deviation. A common measure of dispersion is using the standard deviation. The standard deviation is simply the square root of the sample variance (Lind, Marchal, Wathem, 2005).

Based on the statistical data collected for Team Solutions of the Georgia High School Graduation tests we have made the following assumptions based on this data:

Year

2000-2001

English Math Science Social Studies

84% 83% 57% 73% Mean

43% 48% 47% 46% Median

44% 50% 48% 48% Mode

Year

2001-2002

English Math Science Social Studies

92% 91% 63% 63% Mean

43% 35% 14% 44% Median

43% 46% 56% 47% Mode

Year

2002-2003

English Math Science Social Studies

63% 84% 55% 70% Mean

41% 45% 13% 40% Median

38% 31% 40% 34% Mode

By analyzing the data and using graphic and tabular techniques, we can describe our data set by calculating the central tendencies (mean, medium, and mode) of the data. The use of graphics to present statistical information is very popular. Many people no longer have the time to read complete articles in order to get the specifics that they need about something. A chart or graph would be more convenient