APCSP Data and Analysis 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A student wants to visualize the distribution of quiz scores for a class of 30 students. Which visualization is MOST appropriate?
- Pie chart
- Histogram (Correct answer)
- Line graph
- Scatter plot
Correct answer: Histogram
A histogram groups continuous data into bins and displays frequency, making it ideal for showing the distribution of scores.
Question 2: Which of the following BEST describes the purpose of data cleaning?
- Encrypting data before transmission
- Removing duplicate or incorrect entries to improve data quality (Correct answer)
- Compressing data to save storage space
- Converting data to a binary format
Correct answer: Removing duplicate or incorrect entries to improve data quality
Data cleaning involves identifying and correcting or removing inaccurate, incomplete, or duplicate records to improve dataset quality.
Question 3: A scatter plot shows points trending upward from left to right. What does this indicate?
- A negative correlation between the two variables
- No relationship between the two variables
- A positive correlation between the two variables (Correct answer)
- The data contains many outliers
Correct answer: A positive correlation between the two variables
An upward trend from left to right in a scatter plot indicates a positive correlation — as one variable increases, the other tends to increase as well.
Question 4: Which of the following is an example of structured data?
- A collection of social media posts
- Rows and columns in a relational database table (Correct answer)
- Audio recordings from customer service calls
- PDF documents with legal contracts
Correct answer: Rows and columns in a relational database table
Structured data is organized into a defined schema with rows and columns, such as a relational database or spreadsheet.
Question 5: A program processes a list of names and counts how many times each name appears. What computational task is being performed?
- Sorting
- Filtering
- Aggregation (Correct answer)
- Interpolation
Correct answer: Aggregation
Aggregation summarizes or groups data — counting occurrences of each name is a classic aggregation operation.
Question 6: Which of the following statements about digital data representation is TRUE?
- Colors can only be represented with 8-bit values
- All digital data is ultimately represented as sequences of 0s and 1s (Correct answer)
- Text files require more storage than equivalent image files
- Numbers must be stored differently than text at the hardware level
Correct answer: All digital data is ultimately represented as sequences of 0s and 1s
All digital data — whether text, images, audio, or video — is ultimately stored and processed as binary sequences of 0s and 1s.
Question 7: A dataset of student GPAs has a mean of 3.2 and a median of 3.5. What does this suggest about the distribution?
- The distribution is symmetric
- There are likely high outliers pulling the mean up
- There are likely low outliers pulling the mean down (Correct answer)
- The dataset has no variability
Correct answer: There are likely low outliers pulling the mean down
When the mean is lower than the median, low-value outliers are pulling the mean down, creating a left-skewed (negatively skewed) distribution.
APCSP Data and Analysis 3
A student wants to visualize the distribution of quiz scores for a class of 30 students.
Which visualization is MOST appropriate?