A student was interested in the cigarette smoking habits of college students and collected data from an unbiased random sample of students.The data is summarized in the following table: Why is the table NOT a frequency distribution?
A)The number of males does not equal the sum of males that smoke and do not smoke.
B)The classes are not mutually exclusive.
C)There are too many classes.
D)Class limits cannot be computed.

Question

A student was interested in the cigarette smoking habits of college students and collected data from an unbiased random sample of students.The data is summarized in the following table:  Why is the table NOT a frequency distribution?
A)The number of males does not equal the sum of males that smoke and do not smoke. 
B)The classes are not mutually exclusive. 
C)There are too many classes. 
D)Class limits cannot be computed.

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

A frequency distribution should have mutually exclusive classes, meaning each individual observation can only belong to one class. However, in this table, there are categories for both smokers and non-smokers, meaning individuals can belong to both categories at the same time. Therefore, the table is not a frequency distribution.

A Student Was Interested in the Cigarette Smoking Habits of College