A block development officer reports that the households of his block earned on the average 82,000 rupees last year, well above the 60,000 that the state takes as its line for the block grant, and holds that the block should now be taken off the grant. An answer to which of the following questions would be of most use in judging the officer's position?

An average is a single point and the grant is meant for the households below a line, so what the officer needs and has not supplied is the shape of the distribution. Forty large earners in a block of six thousand can lift the average over the line while all but those forty remain under it, and the grant would then be withdrawn from precisely the households it was made for; the question asked would expose that at once. What the block has received in past years describes the grant's history. The department that fixes the line tells us who set the test, not whether the block passes it. And the number of households lets the average be turned into a total, which is a different quantity and still one number where a spread is wanted.