Scatterplots (College Board AP® Statistics)

Revision Note

Mark Curtis

Expertise

Maths

Scatterplots

What is a scatterplot?

  • A scatterplot is a graph displaying bivariate data

    • The explanatory variable is along the x-axis

    • The response variable is along the y-axis

  • Each point on the scatterplot represents a pair of data

    • The x-coordinate and the y-coordinate

  • Points are plotted as small crosses or circles

    • Points are not joined up

Worked Example

A teacher is interested in the whether the amount of time her students spend on a computer per day is related to the amount of time they spend on a phone per day. She takes a sample of nine students and records the results in the table below.

Hours spent on a phone per day

Hours spent on a computer per day

7.6

1.7

7.0

1.1

8.9

0.7

3.0

5.8

3.0

5.2

7.5

1.7

2.1

6.9

1.3

7.1

5.8

3.3

Draw a scatterplot for the data, with hours spent on a phone per day on the horizontal axis.

Answer:

Scatterplot showing hours spent on a computer per day (y-axis) versus hours spent on a phone per day (x-axis).

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Mark Curtis

Author: Mark Curtis

Mark graduated twice from the University of Oxford: once in 2009 with a First in Mathematics, then again in 2013 with a PhD (DPhil) in Mathematics. He has had nine successful years as a secondary school teacher, specialising in A-Level Further Maths and running extension classes for Oxbridge Maths applicants. Alongside his teaching, he has written five internal textbooks, introduced new spiralling school curriculums and trained other Maths teachers through outreach programmes.