Research psychologists are interested in finding out whether a person’s breathing patterns are affected by a particular experimental treatment. To determine the general respiratory patterns of the n = 30 people in the study, the researchers collected some baseline measurements—the total ventilation in liters of air per minute adjusted for body size—for each person before the treatment. The data are shown here, along with some descriptive tools generated by MINITAB.

a. Summarize the characteristics of the data distribution using the MINITAB output.

b. Does the Empirical Rule provide a good description of the proportion of measurements that fall within two or three standard deviations of the mean? Explain.

c. How large or small does a ventilation measurement have to be before it is considered unusual?