Percentiles & Boxplots

Abstract

This is an activity for an introductory statistics course and introduces boxplots and percentiles. The focus is on interpreting the key features and shape of a boxplot by comparing to the histogram of the same dataset, as well as interpreting numerical summary statistics such as percentiles, range, and interquartile range. This activity fits well in the descriptive statistics section of a statistics course or can be modified to introduce boxplots in other contexts.

Level: High School, Undergraduate
Setting: Classroom
Activity Type: Learning Cycle
Discipline: Statistics
Course: Introductory Statistics
Keywords: percentile, boxplot, minimum, maximum, quartile, median, outlier, five-number summary, range, interquartile range, skew, histogram