PROBABILITY

Maximum and Minimum Temperatures

Search the Internet for U.S. climate data.

Choose the city in which you live.

Click on the tab that reads "Daily."

1. Prepare a spreadsheet with three columns: Date, High Temperature, and Low Temperature. List the past 60 days for which data is available.

2. Prepare a histogram for the data on high temperatures and comment on the shape of the distribution as observed from these graphs.

3. Calculate X^- and S.

4. What percentage of the high temperatures are within the interval X^- - S to X^- + S?

5. What percentage of the high temperatures are within the interval X^- - 2S to X^- + 2S?

6. How do these percentages compare to the corresponding percentages for a normal distribution (68.26% and 95.44%, respectively)?

7. Repeat Parts 2 to 6 for the minimum temperatures on your spreadsheet.

8. Would you conclude that the two distributions are normally distributed? Why or why not?