Box-and-whisker plot

This is an illustration of the 5-number summary

Box plots
▪ A box plot (or box-and-whisker plot), is a commonly used graph a data set showing mainly the
median and quartiles.
▪ Box plots give us a visual impression of how the data is distributed.
▪ The performance of two data sets can be compared using box plots drawn on the same scale.
▪ A box plot uses the 5-number summary listed below:
o min x The lowest score
o Q1 The lower quartile (Q1 or QL )
o MED The median score
o Q3 The upper quartile (Q3 or QU )
o max x The highest score
▪ Consider the box plot drawn below using the given 5-number summary:
min x = 8
25% 25%
Q1 = 11 25% 25%
MED = 12.5
Q3 = 16 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
max x = 18
▪ The box plot must be drawn beside a scale and clearly shows the spread of the four equal quarters
of the data.
Examples
1. This box plot summarises the price of all the books in a book shop.

Price ($)
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55
(a) State the minimum and maximum book prices.
(b) Find the range of the book prices.
(c) State the median book price.
(d) Find the interquartile range.
(e) Fifty percent of the books are priced below what amount?
(f) Twenty-five per cent of the books are priced above what amount?
(g) If there were 1000 books in the store, how many would be priced below $15?

(a) Minimum book price = $5
Maximum book price = $50
(b) Book price range = 50 − 5
= $45
(c) Median book price = $20 (f) 25% priced above $35
(g) 25% of 1000 books priced below $15
(d) IQR = 35 − 15
= 0  25 1000
= $20
= 250 books
(e) 50% priced below $20
2. Consider the following set of data representing 11 scores resulting from rolling two dice and adding
their scores. 7 10 7 12 8 9 6 6 5 4 8
(a) Find the: i. minimum value 5- number summary
ii. maximum value • min x = 4
iii. median • Q1 = 6
iv. lower quartile • MED = 7
v. upper quartile
• Q3 = 9
(b) Draw a box plot to represent the data.
• min x = 12
Q1 MED Q3

(a) 4 5 6 6 7 7 8 8 9 10 12

i. minimum value = 4 (b) Box plot: dice rolls

ii. maximum value = 12
iii. median = 7
iv. lower quartile = 6
v. upper quartile = 9 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13