Stem and Leaf Plots

A Stem and Leaf Plot is a special table where each data value is
split into a "stem" (the first digit or digits) and a "leaf" (usually
the last digit). Like in this example:

The "stem" values are listed down, and the "leaf" values go right
(or left) from the stem values.

The "stem" is used to group the scores and each "leaf" shows the
individual scores within each group.

Consider Table 1 that shows the number of touchdown passes (TD

passes) thrown by each of the 31 teams in the National Football
League in the 2000 season.
To make this clear, let us examine Figure 1 more closely. In the
top row, the four leaves to the right of stem 3 are 2, 3, 3, and 7.
Combined with the stem, these leaves represent the numbers 32,
33, 33, and 37, which are the numbers of TD passes for the first
four teams in Table 1.
The next row has a stem of 2 and 12 leaves.
Together, they represent 12 data points, namely, two occurrences
of 20 TD passes, three occurrences of 21 TD passes, three
occurrences of 22 TD passes, one occurrence of 23 TD passes, two
occurrences of 28 TD passes, and one occurrence of 29 TD passes.
We leave it to you to figure out what the third row represents.
The fourth row has a stem of 0 and two leaves.
It stands for the last two entries in Table 1, namely 9 TD passes
and 6 TD passes. (The latter two numbers may be thought of as 09
and 06.)
One purpose of a stem and leaf display is to clarify the shape of
the distribution.
You can see many facts about TD passes more easily in Figure 1
than in Table 1.
For example, by looking at the stems and the shape of the plot,
you can tell that most of the teams had between 10 and 29
passing TDs, with a few having more and a few having less. The
precise numbers of TD passes can be determined by examining
the leaves.

To construct a stem-and-leaf display, the observations must first

be sorted in ascending order: this can be done most easily if
working by hand by constructing a draft of the stem-and-leaf
display with the leaves unsorted, then sorting the leaves to
produce the final stem-and-leaf display. Here is the sorted set of
data values that will be used in the following example:
44, 46, 47, 49, 63, 64, 66, 68, 68, 72, 72, 75, 76, 81, 84, 88,
106
The stem-and-leaf display is drawn with two columns separated
by a vertical line. The stems are listed to the left of the vertical
line. It is important that each stem is listed only once and that no
numbers are skipped, even if it means that some stems have no
leaves. The leaves are listed in increasing order in a row to the
right of each stem.

Subjects in a psychological study were timed while

completing a certain task. Complete a stem-and-leaf plot for
the following list of times:
7.6, 8.1, 9.2, 6.8, 5.9, 6.2, 6.1, 5.8, 7.3, 8.1, 8.8, 7.4, 7.7, 8.2
The first thing I'll do is reorder this list. My ordered list is:

5.8, 5.9, 6.1, 6.2, 6.8, 7.3, 7.4, 7.6, 7.7, 8.1, 8.1, 8.2, 8.8, 9.2
These values have one decimal place, but the stem-and-leaf plot
makes no accomodation for this. The stem-and-leaf plot only
looks at the last digit (for the leaves) and all the digits before (for
the stem). So I'll have to put a "key" or "legend" on this plot to
show what I mean by the numbers in this plot. The ones digits will
be the stem values, and the tenths will be the leaves.

Complete a stem-and-leaf plot for the following two lists of

class sizes:
Economics
101: 9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 21, 22, 25, 25,
26

Libertarianism: 14, 16, 17, 18, 18, 20, 20, 24, 29

This example has two lists of values. Since the values are similar, I
can plot them all on one stem-and-leaf plot by drawing leaves on
either side of the stem I will use the tens digits as the stem values,
and the ones digits as the leaves. Since "9" (in the Econ 101 list)
has no tens digit, the stem value will be "0".