Question

A company is testing and comparing two candle designs. The box plots show the number of hours that each candle design lasts before burning out. Which statement is best supported by the information in the plots?
A) Design B candles will always last three hours less than design A candles.


B) Design A candles will always last longer than design B candles.


C) Design A candles will likely last longer than design B candles.


D) Design B candles will likely last longer than design A candles.

Answer 1

Since these are box plots, they're based on a lot of data, and we cannot say for certain whether something will be true, but it can give us a good idea. So this means that options A & B are out, since they say 'will always', but we can never say for sure with box plots.

The boxes of the box plot represent basically the average of the data. The beginning of the box is the first quartile, the end of the box is the third quartile, and the line in the middle is the median, which is the middle of the data. Since the box in the box plot of Design A is greater than the box in the box plot of Design B, we can say it's likely that candle Design A will last longer than candle Design B, or option C.