Stem & Leaf Plots

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Hi there. In this educational math/stats post I go over the stem and leaf plot. This plot seems to be popular in a lot of grade school data management curricula in the local schools (in the Toronto area).


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Stem & Leaf Plots - A Way To Display Values


Given a list of numbers, the stem and leaf plot is a way of organizing numbers based on the last (ones) digit called the leaf. The stem of a number is all the digits from the left to the second digit from the right. As an example the number 17 has a leaf of 7 and a stem of 1. The number 118 has a leaf of 8 and a stem of 11.

The picture below is an example of a stem and leaf plot


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The stem 6 contains the numbers 3 and 6 under the leaf section. This corresponds to the numbers 63 and 66. The key at the bottom provides additional context where the number represents an age.

Multiples of numbers are all listed. In the stem of 0 the ones are listed twice to represent two different people with the same age.


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Examples


Example One

We start with a simple stem and leaf plot example of student ages.

Here is the list of student ages from elementary school, middle school and high school.

7, 13, 17, 9, 12, 11, 6, 12, 13, 8, 16, 15, 9, 10, 14, 11

 

The stems for the ages are 0 (for zero tens) and 1. An optional step is to list out numbers that correspond to the stem of 0 and another list for the numbers with a stem of 1.

Stem 0 numbers: 7, 9, 6, 8, 9

Stem 1 numbers: 13, 17, 12, 11, 12, 13, 16, 15, 10, 14, 11

 

When inserting numbers in the stem and leaf plot, make sure that the numbers in each of the stem rows are from smallest to largest.

StemLeaf
06, 7, 8, 9, 9
110, 11, 11, 12, 12, 13, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17

Key: 0 | 7 = 7 years old

 

Since the stem and leaf plot sorts the ages in an organized manner, you can pick out the age of the youngest student and the age of the oldest student.

 

Example Two

This second example looks at people's weights in pounds. Here is the list of weights.

125, 131, 189, 201, 222, 145, 133, 170, 165, 191, 167, 210, 198

 

The spread of values (range) is quite big here. It is best to go right into the stem and leaf plot.

StemLeaf
125
131, 3
145
15
165, 7
170
189
191, 8
201
210
222

Key: 19 | 2 = 192 lbs

 

There is no value from 150 to 159 (inclusive) so the leaf part for the stem of 15 is blank.

 


Pixabay Image Source

Thank you for reading.

Posted with STEMGeeks



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