Minitab Notes for Activity 2

Creating the Worksheet

1. Label two columns with the first names of the people in your group.
2. Enter the distances from the target to the center to the washer in each column

Summarizing the Data (Question 2)

Do this as a check. I want you to find the values asked for by hand as practice for the test.

Minitab does not find the variation for you. Another name for Variation is Sum of Squares, but the Sum of Squares under the Statistics box is the uncorrected sum of squares, which is what you get if you just square the values and add them up, not the value we want which is found by subtracting the mean before squaring the values.

1. Choose Stat / Basic Statistics / Display Descriptive Statistics
2. Double click on your two variable names
3. Click on Statistics
   1. Turn on the box for Variance
   2. Turn off the box for N Missing and SE Mean
   3. Click OK
4. Click OK

You should get some output that looks like this.

Descriptive Statistics: john, sue
Variable  N   Mean  StDev  Variance  Minimum     Q1  Median     Q3  Maximum
john      6  6.267  2.242     5.027    3.400  4.375   5.900  8.725    9.100
sue       5  5.500  1.214     1.475    4.100  4.500   5.200  6.650    7.300

Check the sample size, mean, median, variance, and standard deviation with what you calculated by hand.

Go to Math 113 Activities page.

Go to Math 113 homepage

Last updated August 16, 2005 2:08 PM