Question

100 surnames were randomly picked up from a local telephone directory and a frequency distribution of the number of letters in the English alphabet in the surnames was found as follows:

Number of letters	Number of surnames
1 − 4 4 − 6 6 − 8 8 − 12 12 − 20	6 30 44 16 4

(i) Draw a histogram to depict the given information.

(ii) Write the class interval in which the maximum number of surname lie.

Answer 1

(i) Here, it can be observed that the data has class intervals of varying width. The proportion of the number of surnames per 2 letters interval can be calculated as follows.

Number of letters	Frequency (Number of surnames)	Width of class	Length of rectangle
1 − 4	6	3
4 − 6	30	2
6 − 8	44	2
8 − 12	16	4
12 − 20	4	8

By taking the number of letters on x-axis and the proportion of the number of surnames per 2 letters interval on y-axis and choosing an appropriate scale (1 unit = 4 students for y axis), the histogram can be constructed as follows.

(ii) The class interval in which the maximum number of surnames lies is 6 − 8 as it has 44 surnames in it i.e., the maximum for this data.