Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
A friend has recently given birth to a baby weighing 10 lb, and given the larger than average size of the baby is interested to discover
the probability of having a baby larger than this. The local doctors’ surgery has given us data on 1174 baby weights.
We are going to model this with a Normal distribution and calculate the probability of a baby weight greater than 10 lb.
In Excel copy the column titled “Birth Weights (lb)”.
Then in Autograph, right-click in the Data column and Paste.
So far we have only entered the raw data. To plot a histogram we need to first group the data.
Now we are going to fit a Normal distribution to the data.
Now to calculate the probability of a baby weight greater than 10 lb using our model.
The Birth Weights spreadsheet also includes the mother’s age, height, weight and whether or not she smoked.
Other interesting investigations might include the effect of smoking on birth weight.