Reported alcohol consumption (number of alcoholic beverages consumed in a typical week) by students at this university is heavily skewed to the right with 13 outliers who consume anywhere from 18 to 36 alcoholic drinks in a typical week. The median is 1, which suggests that the typical student drinks one alcoholic beverage a week. A little over half of the students reported drinking 1 or fewer alcoholic beverages a week (53%, 110 out of 206). Nearly half of the students (47%, 94 out of 206) reported not drinking alcohol at all.
The IQR is 7, which highlights the large amount of variability in the middle half of the distribution. Students in the middle half of the distribution consumed 0-7 drinks. (This is Q1 to Q3.) Due to the heavy skew in the distribution and the large amount of spread in the 3rd quartile, the middle half of the distribution does not represent typical students very well. For example, 67% (2/3) of the students reported 3 or fewer alcoholic drinks a week, so it is somewhat misleading to say that typical students consume up to 7 alcoholic drinks a week.
Do the data suggest that drinking is a problem in this university?
According to webMD.org, "heavy" or "at risk" drinking for women means more than seven drinks per week, or more than three in any day. For men, it's more than 14 drinks in a week, or more than four in a day. For this distribution, about 25% (51/206) are drinking more than 7 drinks a week and about 21% (21/206) are more than 14 drinks a week. This is a large enough proportion that we think the university student population does have a drinking problem, despite the fact that 47% of the students reported not drinking at all.
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