Stem-and-leaf plots, also known as stemplot or stemplot chart, are graphical representations used to display numerical data in a visual and organized manner to provide a quick and simple way to visualize the distribution, central tendency, and variability of a data.
• They are usually used when there are large amounts of data values to analyze.
• This technique provides the rank order of numerical values from lowest value to highest value or from largest value to the lowest value in the dataset.
Note 1: Steam-and-leaf displays are only useful for moderately sized data set (around 15-150 data points).
Some examples of common uses of these graphs are to track series of:
- scores on sports teams
- temperature or rainfall over a period
- classroom test scores
Note 2: The steam-and leaf plot retains the original data in the dataset into leading digits (or steam) and trailing digits (or leaves).
In other words, a basic stem-and leaf display contains two columns separated by a vertical line. The left column contains the stems and the right column contains the leaves.
For example, if we have a number 35, then the stem (leading digit) is 3 and leaf (trailing digit) is 5.
Similarly, for 248, the stem is 24 and the leaf is 8.
