Question

Computers As a quality control manager at Texas Instruments, you find that defective calculators have various causes, including worn machinery, human error, bad supplies, and packaging mistreatment. Which of the following graphs would be best for describing the causes of defects: histogram; scatterplot; Pareto chart; dot plot; pie chart?

Short answer

A Pareto chart would most appropriately represent the causes of the defects in the calculators.

Step-by-step solution

Given information

Four causes of defects present in calculators are identified as worn machinery, human error, bad supplies, and packaging mistreatment.

Choice of graph

Different types of graphs are constructed to represent different kinds of data.

The analysis of the data becomes easy and meaningful if the correct graphical representation is used to display the data values.

Few different graphs are:

• Histogram: It represents the group continuous frequency distributions using column.
• Scatterplot: It is used to represent paired observations for two variables.
• Pareto chart: It is used as a bar chart for categorical data such that columns are arranged in descending order of height, from left to right.
• Dotplot: It is used to represent observations of one variable using simple dots.
• Pie chart: It is used to represent a proportion of each category of the variable using segments of a circle.

Appropriate graph for the given data

When categories of a particular variable are present, or the data is qualitative, the most appropriate graph to represent the data is a bar chart; in this case, a Pareto chart. It makes the comparison of different categories easy and effective.

Here, the different causes of defects can be displayed using bars (according to their frequency) and can be arranged in descending order.

The most frequently occurring cause can be easily identified, and thereby the corresponding measures can be adopted to eliminate the most common defects that occur in calculators.

Thus, a Pareto chart will be the most appropriate graph for the given data.