A nationwide study was done to assess the programming proficiency of students taking a statistical programming class.The students were asked their proficiency in the statistical software SAS.The survey was sent to students at over 100 universities and 112 responses were received from 21 different universities.The results were published in the journal International Mathematical Forum in 2011.The results in the form of a pie chart are shown below. It would have been better to display the data in a histogram.

Question

A nationwide study was done to assess the programming proficiency of students taking a statistical programming class.The students were asked their proficiency in the statistical software SAS.The survey was sent to students at over 100 universities and 112 responses were received from 21 different universities.The results were published in the journal International Mathematical Forum in 2011.The results in the form of a pie chart are shown below.  It would have been better to display the data in a histogram.

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

A pie chart is appropriate for displaying the distribution of categorical data, such as the proportion of respondents who reported each level of proficiency in SAS. However, a histogram would be more appropriate for displaying the distribution of a numerical variable, such as the number of students who reported each level of proficiency.

A Nationwide Study Was Done to Assess the Programming Proficiency