Ideal Family
In 2012, the General Social Survey asked respondents how many children they felt would be in an "ideal" family. The histogram contains the data from 1730 people who responded to the survey
a. Approximately what is the mean ideal number of children? Explain how you chose this value.
b. What is the approximate value for the median ideal number of children? Describe how you chose this value.
c. Find the mean by completing the work that is started below:
x‾=[(18(0)+43(1)+965(2)+.....]/1730
d. Explain how the method in part c is related to the usual method of finding the mean, which has all the raw numbers given, without frequencies.
e. Which is more appropriate to report for these data, the mean or the median? Why?