Typical class size

1. Typical class size 98 students signed up for an introductory statistics course. The administrator in charge of sectioning follows an established guideline that says that typical class sizes for this course should be no more than 14. After some calculation, the administrator decided to schedule 7 sections.

2. Typical class size Because students were able to select their section based on days and times, some sections were more popular than others. The class sizes were as follows: 3, 4, 9, 16, 22, 22, 22 • What calculation do you think the administrator used? • Do you think the guideline of having typical class sizes for this course of 14 or less was met? Justify your answer. • List as many different but reasonable methods (i.e., formulas or procedures) for determining the size of a typical class as you can. • Determine the “typical” class size for each of your interpretations of “typical.”

3. Typical class size Conclusions: Describing the “typical class size” may not be as straightforward as you originally thought. Not only can we consider what is typical in terms of mean, median, or mode, we also need to consider whether “per section” or “per student” measures are most appropriate.