Chapter 4: Descriptive Statistics

EXERCISE: DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS

1. In the following list, post a D for the situations in which statistical techniques are used
for the purpose of description and an I for those in which the techniques are used for
the purpose of inference.

_____ (a) The price movements of 50 issues of stock are analysed to determine
whether stocks in general have gone up or down during a certain period
of time.

_____ (b) A statistical table is constructed for the purpose of presenting the
passenger-miles flown by various commercial airlines in the United
States.

_____ (c) The average of a group of test scores is computed so that each score in
the group can be classified as being either above or below average.

_____ (d) Several manufacturing firms in a particular industry are surveyed for
the purpose of estimating industrywide investment in capital
equipment.

2. No matter how few elements are included in a statistical population, however, a sample
taken from that population (can/cannot) be larger than the population itself.

3. Thus any descriptive measurement of a population is considered to be a

(statistics/parameter), and a descriptive measurement of a sample is a sample
________.

4. The word “statistics” has at least three distinct meanings, depending on the context in
which it is used. It may refer to:

(i) the procedure of statistical analysis

(ii) descriptive measures of a sample
(iii) the individual measurements, or elements, that make up either a sample or a
population.

(a) When one becomes “an accident statistics” by being included in some count of
accident frequency, the term is used in the sense of definition ____.

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(b) According to the definitions in a course of study called “Business Statistics”

the term “statistics” is usually used in the sense of definition ____.

(c) According to the definitions when such sample statistics as the proportion of a
sample in favour of a proposal and the average age of those in the sample are
determined, the term “statistics” is being used in the sense of definition ____.

5. The two major applications of the tools of statistical analysis are directed toward the
purposes of statistical ____________ and statistical ____________.

6. When all the elements in a statistical population are measured, the process is referred
to as “taking a __________“. If only a portion of the elements included in a statistical
population is measured, the process is called ____________.

7. Which of the following measures of variability is not dependent on the exact value of
each observation?

(a) range
(b) variance
(c) standard deviation
(d) coefficient of variation

8. A measure of dispersion which is insensitive to extreme values in the data set is the:

(a) Quartile deviation

(b) Standard deviation
(c) Average absolute deviation
(d) All of the above

9. An absolute measure of dispersion which expresses variation in the same units as the
original data is the:

(a) Standard deviation

(b) Coefficient of variation
(c) Variance
(d) All of the above

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10. How does the computation of a sample variance differ from the computation of a
population variance?

(a)  is replaced by x
(b) N is replaced by n 1
(c) N is replaced by n
(d) a and c but not b
(e) a and b but not c

11. Which measure of central tendency would be most useful in each of the following
instances?

(a) The production manager for a manufacturer of glass jars, who is concerned
about the proper jar size to manufacture, has sample data on jar sizes ordered
by customers. Would the mean, median, or modal jar size be of most value to
the manager?

(b) The sales manager for a quality furniture manufacturer is interested in selecting
the regions most likely to purchase his firm’s products. Would he be most
interested in the mean or median family income in prospective sales areas?

(c) A security analyst is interested in describing the daily market price change of
the common stock of a manufacturing company. Only rarely does the market
price of the stock change by more than one point, but occasionally the price
will change by as many as four points in one day. Should the security analyst
describe the daily price change of the stock in terms of the mean, median, or
modal daily market price change?

12. Why isn’t an average computed from a group frequency distribution exactly the same
as that computed from the original raw data used to construct the distribution?

13. For which type of distribution (positively skewed, negatively skewed, or symmetric)
is:

(a) The mean less than the median?

(b) The mode less than the mean?

(c) The median less than the mode?

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14. The following scores represent the final examination grade for an elementary statistics
course:

23 60 79 32 57 74 52 70 82 36
80 77 81 95 41 65 92 85 55 76
52 10 64 75 78 25 80 98 81 67
41 71 83 54 64 72 88 62 74 43
60 78 89 76 84 48 84 90 15 79
34 67 17 82 69 74 63 80 85 61

Using 10 class intervals with the lowest starting at 9:

(a) Set up a frequency distribution.

(b) Construct a cumulative frequency distribution.
(c) Construct a frequency histogram.
(d) Construct a smoothed cumulative frequency polygon.
(e) Estimate the number of people who made a score of at least 60 but less than 75.
(f) Discuss the skewness of the distribution.

15. Classify the following random variables as discrete or continuous.

(a) The number of automobile accidents each year in Hong Kong.

(b) The length of time to do problem 1 above.
(c) The amount of milk produced yearly by a particular cow.
(d) The number of eggs laid each month by 1 hen.
(e) Numbers of shares sold each year in the stock market.
(f) The weight of grain in kg produced per acre.

16. An electronically controlled automatic bulk food filler is set to fill tubs with 60 units of
cheese. A random sample of five tubs from a large production lot shows filled weights
of 60.00, 59.95, 60.05, 60.02 and 60.01 units. Find the mean and the standard deviation
of these fills.

17. In four attempts it took a person 48, 55, 51 and 50 minutes to do a certain job.

(a) Find the mean, the range, and the standard deviation of these four sample
values.
(b) Subtract 50 minutes from each of the times, recalculate the mean, the range,
and the standard deviation, and compare the results with those obtained in part
(a).
(c) Add 10 minutes to each of the times, recalculate the mean, the range, and the
standard deviation, and compare the results with those obtained in part (a).
(d) Multiply each of the sample values by 2, recalculate the mean, the range, and
the standard deviation, and compare the results with those obtained in part (a).
(e) In general, what effect does (1) adding a constant to each sample value, and (2)
multiplying each sample value by a positive constant, have on the mean, the
range, and the standard deviation of a sample?
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18. Find the mean, median and mode for the set of numbers

(a) 3, 5, 2, 6, 5, 9, 5, 2, 8, 6;
(b) 51.6, 48.7, 50.3, 49.5, 48.9.

19. The lengths of a large shipment of chromium strips have a mean of 0.44 m and standard
deviation of 0.001 m. At least what percentage of these lengths must lie between

(a) 0.438 and 0.442 m?

(b) 0.436 and 0.444 m?
(c) 0.430 and 0.450 m?

20. The 1971 populations and growth rates for various regions are given below. Find the
growth rate for the world as a whole

Region Population (millions) Annual Growth Rate (%)

Europe 470 0.8

USSR 240 1.1
N. America 230 1.3
Oceania 20 2.1
Asia 2,100 2.3
Africa 350 2.6
S. America 290 2.9

21. Suppose that the annual income of the residents of a certain country has a mean of
$48,000 and a median of $34,000. What is the shape of the distribution?

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22. In a factory, the time during working hours in which a machine is not operating as a
result of breakage or failure is called the ‘downtime”. The following distribution shows
a sample of 100 downtimes of a certain machine (rounded to the nearest minute):

Downtime Frequencies

0–9 3
10 – 19 13
20 – 29 30
30 – 39 25
40 – 49 14
50 – 59 8
60 – 69 4
70 – 79 2
80 – 89 1

With reference to the above distribution, calculate

(a) the mean.

(b) the standard deviation.
(c) the median.
(d) the quartiles Q1 and Q3.
(e) the deciles D1 and D9.
(f) the percentiles P5 and P95.
(g) Pearson’s first and second coefficients of skewness.
(h) the modal downtime of the distribution by the empirical formula (using the
results obtained in part (a) and part (c) only). Compare this result with the mode
obtained in part (g).

23. Consider the following frequency distribution of weights of 150 bolts:

Weight (grams) Frequency

5.00 and less than 5.01 4

5.01 and less than 5.02 18
5.02 and less than 5.03 25
5.03 and less than 5.04 36
5.04 and less than 5.05 30
5.05 and less than 5.06 22
5.06 and less than 5.07 11
5.07 and less than 5.08 3
5.08 and less than 5.09 1

(a) Calculate the mean and standard deviation of the weights of bolts to three
decimal places.

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(b) Estimate from the frequency distribution, the number of bolts which are within
one standard deviation of the mean.

(c) Suppose that each bolt has a nut attached to it to make a nut-and-bolt. Nuts
have a distribution of weights with a mean of 2.043 grams and standard
deviation 0.008. Calculate the standard deviation of the weights of nut-and-
bolts.

24. A random sample of 11 vouchers is taken from a corporate expense account. The
Voucher amounts are as follows:

$276.72 194.17 259.83 249.45

201.43 237.66 199.28 211.49
240.16 261.10 226.21

Compute: (a) the range;

(b) the interquartile range;
(c) the variance (definitional and computational);
(d) the standard deviation;
(e) the coefficient of variation.

25. A hardware distributor reports the following distribution of sales from a sample of
100 sales receipts.

Dollar Values Number of

of Sales Sales (f)
$ 0 but less than 20 16
20 but less than 40 18
40 but less than 60 14
60 but less than 80 24
80 but less than 100 20
100 but less than 120 8
Total 100

Find: (a) the variance (definitional and computational);

(b) the standard deviation;
(c) the coefficient of variation.

26. The National Space Agency requires that all resistors used in electronic packages
assembled for space flight have a coefficient of variation less than 5 percent. The

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following resistors made by the Mary Drake Company have been tested with results as
follows:

Resistor Mean Resistance (K-ohms) Standard Deviation (K-ohms)

A 100 4
B 200 12
C 300 14
D 400 16
E 500 18
F 600 20

Which of the resistors meets specifications?

27. Salaries paid last year to supervisors had a mean of $25,000 with a standard deviation
of $2000. What will be the new mean and standard deviation if all salaries are increased
by $2500?