176: Reported Ages

Sayeth Mr Honner:

Here’s a fun little data set from a statistics textbook I’m reading.



These are the distributions of last digits of ages reported on the 1880 and 1970 US Censuses. At least two interesting questions come to mind, one with a seemingly easy answer.

What do you think his two questions are?

What other questions did you have?

What would the graph look like if we asked people for the ages of their parents?