CNN News Clip

Exit polls and voter turnout are used to predict the CNN News Clipoutcomes of presidential elections, but sometimes can lead to faulty predictions, as we saw in the Bush/Gore election of 2000. Data, in the form of tables, are often flashed on the screen as we see in the CNN video about this close election. We see graphs on television in the form of advertising and we remember slogans such as "Kids Prefer Del Monte Fruit Cups." "Nine out of ten dentists recommend Trident for their patients who chew gum." "Crest has been shown to be ." "You can clearly see that Bufferin is the most effective ." "Penzoil is better suited ." "Sylvania was preferred by ." "How can anyone analyze the claims of the commercials we see and hear on a daily basis?" asked Betty. "I even subscribe to Consumer Reports, but so many of the claims seem to be unreasonable. I don't like to buy items by trial and error, and I really don't believe all the claims in advertisements."

The first step in dealing with and understanding statistics is to think critically and understand some of the ways in which data can be organized. In this section, Betty will learn how to make a frequency distribution and then how to organize the data into a bar graph or a line graph.