Question

Paying for championships Does paying high salaries lead to more victories in professional sports? The New York Yankees have long been known for having Major League Baseball’s highest team payroll. And over the years, the team has won many championships. This strategy didn’t pay off in 2008, when the Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series. Maybe the Yankees didn’t spend enough money that year. The figure shows histograms of the salary distributions for the two teams during the 2008 season. Why can’t you use these graphs to effectively compare the team payrolls?

Short answer

The scales on the horizontal axis in the two histograms are very different.

Step-by-step solution

Given information. 

salary distribution histograms for the two teams during the 2008 season

 Use these graphs to compare team payrolls effectively.

The scales on the horizontal axis in the two histograms are very different, making it difficult to compare the two distributions effectively.

To effectively compare team payrolls, the scales on both axes must be identical on both graphs.

As a results:

The scales on the horizontal axis in the two histograms are very different.