Against All Odds: Inside Statistics

As a first step in visualizing data, we use stemplots to understand measurements taken by the U.S. Army when they size up soldiers in order to design well-fitting gear and supplies for modern warfighters.

Meteorologists use histograms to map when lightning strikes and this visualisation technique helps them understand the data in new ways.

It's helpful to know the centre of a distribution - which is what the clerical workers in Colorado Springs found out in the 1980s when they campaigned for comparable wages for comparable work.

Using the example of hot dog calorie counts, we use boxplots to visualise the five-number summary and make comparisons between different types of frankfurters.

How can we compare sales at two franchises in the Wahoo's restaurant chain? Standard deviation helps us quantify the variability in sales.

A nature preserve that's tracked bird migrations through New England for decades records tons of bird-related data; everything from wingspan measurements to arrival dates provides examples of normal distributions.