Question 5.45

15. Here is a stemplot for the percentage of live births to unmarried mothers for each state in the United States in 2007. (Source: 2010 report on Centers for Disease Control website.)

image

  1. Explain how and why there are repeated stems.
  2. Describe the shape of the distribution.

15.

(a) The repeated stems break up the intervals further. For example, the two "2 stems" break the twenties into 20-24 and 25-29. Also, if stems were not repeated, too few stems would make the stemplot less informative.

(b) The distribution is reasonably symmetric and single-peaked.