Question

Esther wants to know if the number of words on a page in her language arts book is generally more than the number of words on a page in her social studies book. She takes a random sample of 25 pages in each book and then calculates the mean, median, and mean absolute deviation for the 25 samples of each book.

Book Mean Median Mean Absolute Deviation
Language arts 78.5 60 14.2
Social studies 68.7 65 9.8

She claims that because the mean number of words on each page of the language arts book is greater than the mean number of words on each page of the social studies book, the language arts book has more words per page. Based on the data, is this a valid inference? Yes, because there is a lot of variability in the language arts book data

No, because there is a lot of variability in the language arts book data

Yes, because the mean is larger in the language arts book

No, because the mean is larger in the social studies book

Answer 1

[AI-generated answer — Bot GPT 3.5]

No, because there is a lot of variability in the data for both books. The mean, median, and mean absolute deviation for the language arts book are all higher than those for the social studies book, but the variability in the data means that the mean alone is not a sufficient basis for drawing a conclusion about which book has more words per page.