Question

Where are the nurses? Table 1.5 gives the number of ac- tive nurses per 100,000 people in each state.5 .35 URSES (a) Why is the number of nurses per 100,000 people a better measure of the availability of nurses than a simple count of the number of nurses in a state? (b) Make a histogram that displays the distribution of nurses per 100,000 people. Write a brief description of the distribution. Are there any outliers? If so, can you explain them?

Answer 1

(a) Think of 2 states say A and B where no. of nurses are same but one has a much larger population than other, then the number of nurses in the larger population may not be enough to serve all patients. Due this reason for comparing we should have some common base/unit like per capita or per 100000 in this case.

(b)

3rd pper Limit 1282 Quartile Quartile IQR 315 Limit 443 757 967 Chart Title 25 20 15 10 21 12 10 (600, 760] (920, 1080] (1240, 1340] 600 (760, 920] (1080, 1240] >1340 No. of Nurses per 100000

The data more or less looks to come from a Normal distribution with mean in the range (760-920). Dist. of Columbia is an outlier as it lies beyond 1.5* IQR from 3rd quartile. A reason for this can be that it is the capital and thus there are much more number of hospitals and medical services and thus more staff.