Chapter 4.1, Problem 12GA

As our friend Mr. Twain pointed out over 100 years ago, statistics can be used to mislead if you’re not careful about interpreting them. The online resources for Lesson 4-1 contain an entire supplemental section on ways that statistics can be misused, either intentionally or not. For now, we’ll look at one example that’s particularly relevant to the topic of this lesson.

In promotional materials, a small business claimed that their average employee makes over $150,000 per year. The table shows the annual salary for all ten employees.

Employee	Salary
William	$1,200,000
Andrew	$28,000
Marie	$42,000
Miguel	$55,000
Dwight	$60,000
Elena	$72,000
Rachel	$28,000
Kevin	$61,500
Jamaal	$40,000
Dean	$52,000

Is the company’s claim technically truthful? Compute the mean to find out.