Question

In Exercises 1–6, refer to the data below, which are total home game playing times (hours) for all Major League Baseball teams in a recent year (based on data from Baseball Prospectus).

236 237 238 239 241 241 242 245 245 245 246 247 247 248 248 249 250 250 250 251 252 252 253 253 258 258 258 260 262 264

Deceptive Graph Assume that you want to create the histogram for Exercise 3 in a way that exaggerates the differences among the times. Describe how the histogram from Exercise 3 can be modified to accomplish that exaggeration.

Short answer

The vertical scale of the histogram should begin from a number greater than 0 and not 0 to exaggerate the differences among the playing times.

Step-by-step solution

Given information

A histogram is constructed for the number of playing hours.

Refer to Exercise 3CRE; the histogram is given as follows:

Deceptive histogram

When a histogram is constructed with the vertical scale not beginning from 0, it creates a false impression for the readers.

The histogram is considered deceptive because it exaggerates the differences between the values and does not accurately represent the frequencies.

Thus, a modification in the constructed histogram that will result in exaggerated differences between playing times will begin the vertical axis from a number greater than 0 and not 0.