A survey was conducted by a group of students as a part of their environment awareness programme, in which they collected the following data regarding the number of plants in 20 houses in a locality. Find the mean number of plants per house.
Number of Plants | $0-2$ | $2-4$ | $4-6$ | $6-8$ | $8-10$ | $10-12$ | $12-14$ |
Number of Houses | $1$ | $2$ | $1$ | $5$ | $6$ | $2$ | $3$ |
Which method did you use for finding the mean, and why?
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Ans: The number of houses denoted by \[{{x}_{i}}\].
The mean can be found as given below:
\[\overline{X}=\frac{\sum{{{f}_{i}}{{x}_{i}}}}{\sum{{{f}_{i}}}}\]
Class mark \[\left( {{x}_{i}} \right)\] for each interval is calculated as follows:\[xi=\text{ }\frac{\text{Upper class limit+Lower class limit}}{2}\]
\[{{x}_{i}}\] and \[{{f}_{i}}{{x}_{i}}\] can be calculated as follows:
Number of Plants | Number of houses ${{f}_{i}}$ | \[{{x}_{i}}\] | \[{{f}_{i}}{{x}_{i}}\] |
$0-2$ | $1$ | $1$ | $1\times 1=1$ |
$2-4$ | $2$ | $3$ | $2\times 3=6$ |
$4-6$ | $1$ | $5$ | $1\times 5=5$ |
$6-8$ | $5$ | $7$ | $5\times 7=35$ |
$8-10$ | $6$ | $9$ | $6\times 9=54$ |
$10-12$ | $2$ | $11$ | $2\times 11=22$ |
$12-14$ | $3$ | $13$ | $3\times 13=39$ |
Total | $20$ | $162$ |
From the table, it can be observed that
$\sum{{{f}_{i}}=20}$
$\sum{{{f}_{i}}{{x}_{i}}}=162$
Substituting the value of \[{{f}_{i}}{{x}_{i}}\]and ${{f}_{i}}$ in the formula of mean we get:
Mean number of plants per house \[\left( \overline{X} \right)\]:
$ \overline{X}=\frac{\sum{{{f}_{i}}{{x}_{i}}}}{\sum{{{f}_{i}}}} $
$ \overline{X}=\frac{162}{20}=8.1$
Therefore, the mean number of plants per house is \[8.1\].
In this case, we will use the direct method because the value of \[{{x}_{i}}\] and ${{f}_{i}}$ .