Chapter R, Problem 1.24RE

Sluggers Babe Ruth was the first great “slugger” in baseball. His record of 60 home runs in one season held for 34 years until Roger Maris hit 61 in 1961. Mark McGwire (with the aid of steroids) set a new standard of 70 in 1998. Listed below are the home run totals for each season McGwire played. Also listed are Babe Ruth’s home run totals.

McGwire: 3*, 49, 32, 33, 39, 22, 42, 9*,

9*, 39, 52, 58, 70, 65, 32*, 29*

Ruth: 54, 59, 35, 41, 46, 25, 47, 60, 54, 46, 49, 46, 41, 34, 22

1. a) Find the 5-number summary for McGwire’s career.
2. b) Do any of his seasons appear to be outliers? Explain.
3. c) McGwire played in only 18 games at the end of his first big league season, and missed major portions of some other seasons because of injuries to his back and knees. Those seasons might not be representative of his abilities. They are marked with asterisks in the list above. Omit these values and make parallel boxplots comparing McGwire’s career to Babe Ruth’s.
4. d) Write a few sentences comparing the two sluggers.
5. e) Create side-by-side stem-and-leaf displays comparing the careers of the two players.
6. f) What aspects of the distributions are apparent in the stem-and-leaf displays that did not clearly show in the boxplots?