Question

A comic-strip writer churns out a different number of comic strips each day. For 16 days, the writer logged the number of comic strips written each day (sorted low to high): {1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7}. What type of skew can be observed in this distribution?

positive skew

negative skew

zero skew

skew cannot be observed

Answer 1

One way to observe the skewness of a data set is to find the quartiles: Q₁, Q₂, Q₃ and then sketch the box plot

We have the data set already in ascending order, so finding the quartiles is quite straight forward. 

We have Q₁ = 2, Q₂ = 3, Q₃ = 5 (refer to the first picture below)

The box plot is given in the second picture and from this plot, we can see that the data tail slightly on the right, and this shows a positive skew.