SS- Lab Questions

1. Draw a suitable bar chart for the data in Table 1.16.

Industrial Sources for Consumption and Investment Demand (thousand million)

Producing Industry Consumption Investment
Agriculture, mining 1.1 0.1
Metal manufacturers 2.0 3.7
Other manufacturing 6.8 0.3
Construction 0.9 2.7
Gas, electricity & water 1.2 0.2
Services 16.5 0.8
Total 28.5 7.8
Table 1.16

2. Three thousand six hundred people who work in Bradford were asked about the
means of transport that they used for daily commuting. The data collected is
shown in Table 1.19.

Type of Transport Frequency of Response

Private Car 1800
Bus 900
Train 300
Other 600

Construct a pie chart to represent this data.

3. The results of the voting in an election are shown in Table 1.20.

Mr P 2045 votes
Mr Q 4238 votes
Mrs R 8605 votes
Ms S 12012 votes

Represent this information on a pie chart.

4. Create a suitable histogram to represent the number of customers visited by a
sales man over an 80 week period (Table 1.26).

68 64 75 82 68 60 62 88 76 93 73 79 88 73 60 93
71 59 85 75 61 65 75 87 74 62 95 78 63 72 66 78
82 75 94 77 69 74 68 60 96 78 89 61 75 95 60 79
83 71 79 62 67 97 78 85 76 65 71 75 65 80 73 57
88 78 62 76 53 74 86 67 73 81 72 63 76 75 85 77

5. Create a suitable histogram to represent the spending on extra-curricular activities

for a random sample of university students during the ninth week of the first
term (Table 1.27).

16.91 9.65 22.68 12.45 18.24 11.79 6.48 12.93 7.25 13.02
8.10 3.25 9.00 9.90 12.87 17.50 10.05 27.43 16.01 6.63
14.73 8.59 6.50 20.35 8.84 13.45 18.75 24.10 13.57 9.18
9.50 7.14 10.41 12.80 32.09 6.74 11.38 17.95 7.25 4.32
8.31 6.50 13.80 9.87 6.29 14.59 19.25 5.74 4.95 15.90

6. Obtain a scatter plot for the data in Table 1.36 and comment on whether there
is a link between road deaths and the number of vehicles on the road. Would
you expect this to be true? Provide reasons for your answer.
 Countries Vehicles per 100 Road Deaths per
population 100,000 population
Great Britain 31 14
Belgium 32 30
Denmark 30 23
France 46 32
Germany 30 26
Irish Republic 19 20
Italy 35 21
Netherlands 40 23
Canada 46 30
U.S.A. 57 35

7. Obtain a scatter plot for the data in Table 1.37 that represents the passenger miles
flown by a UK based airline (millions of passenger miles) during the period 2003-
2004. Comment on the relationship between miles flown and quarter.

Year Quarter 1 Quarter 2 Quarter 3 Quarter 4

2003 98.9 191.0 287.4 123.2
2004 113.4 228.8 316.2 155.7
8. In 12 consecutive innings a batman's scores were: 6, 13, 16, 45, 93, 0, 62, 87, 136, 25,
14, and 31. Find his mean score and the median.

9. The following are the IQs of 12 people: 115, 89, 94, 107, 98, 87, 99, 120, 100, 94,
100, 99. It is claimed that 'the average person in the group has an IQ of over
100'. Is this a reasonable assertion?

10 A sample of six components was tested to destruction, to establish how long they
would last. The times to failure (in hours) during testing were 40, 44, 55, 55, 64,
and 69. Which would be the most appropriate average to describe the life of these
components? What are the consequences of your choice?

11. a. Find the mean, median and mode of the following set of data: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5.
. b. The average salary paid to graduates in three companies is: £7000, £6000,
and £9000 per annum respectively. If the respective number of graduates in these
companies is 5, 12, and 3, find the mean salary paid to the 20 graduates.

13. Cameos Ltd is employed by a leading market research organization based in

Berlin. The company is discussing with the firm whether to expand the catering
facilities provided to its employees to include a greater range of products. The
initial research by Cameos has identified the following set of weekly spend (€) by
individual employees.

22 16 26 33 33 37 9 23 32 17
20 13 12 18 19 10 21 22 25 22
22 22 34 24 23 21 38 31 41 20
Table 2.9

(a) Plot the histogram and visually comment on the shape of the weekly
expenditure. Hint: use class width of 5.
(b) Calculate the values of the mean and median.
(c) Use descriptive statistics in conjunction with the histogram to comment on weekly
expenditure.

14. The frequency distribution of the length of a sample of 98 nails is presented in

Table 2.11 (measured to the nearest 0.1 mm).

a. Find the mean length of this sample by hand and by using a spreadsheet.
b. Construct the cumulative frequency graph and use this to estimate the median.
c. Check the value of the median using the formula method.

Length Frequency
 4.0 - 4.2 4
4.3 - 4.5 9
4.6 - 4.8 13
4.9 - 5.1 20
5.2 - 5.4 34
15. Greendelivery.com has recently
5.5 - 5.7 18
decided to review the weekly mileage of the
delivery vehicles used to deliver shopping purchased online to customer homes from
a central parcel depot. The sample data collected is part of the first stage in analysing
the economic benefit of potentially moving all vehicles to bio-fuels from diesel.

80 165 159 143 140

136 138 118 120 124
159 131 93 145 109
163 136 163 142 80
106 111 123 161 179
144 145 91 112 146
170 105 131 141 122
137 152 109 122 126
114 155 92 143 165
Table 2.20

(a) Use Excel to construct a frequency distribution and plot the histogram with
class intervals of 10 and classes 75-84, 85-94, ….., 175-184. Comment on the
pattern in mileage travelled by the company vehicles.
(b) Use the raw data to determine the mean, median, standard deviation, and semi
inter quartile range.
(c) Comment on which measure you would use to describe the average and
measure of dispersion. Explain using your answers to (a) and (b).
(d) Calculate the measure of skewness and kurtosis and comment on the
distribution shape.

16. The manager at BIG JIMS restaurant is concerned about the time it takes to process
credit card payments at the counter by counter staff. The manager has collected the following
processing time data (time in minutes/seconds) (Table 2.21) and requested that summary
statistics are calculated.

(a) Calculate a five number Processing credit cards (n= 40)

summary for this data set. 1.57 1.38 1.97 1.52 1.39
(b) Do we have any 1.09 1.29 1.26 1.07 1.76
evidence for a symmetric 1.13 1.59 0.27 0.92 0.71
distribution? 1.49 1.73 0.79 1.38 2.46
(c) Use the Excel Analysis- 0.98 2.31 1.23 1.56 0.89
Tool Pak to calculate 0.76 1.23 1.56 1.98 2.01
descriptive statistics. 1.40 1.89 0.89 1.34 3.21
0.76 1.54 1.78 4.89 1.98
17. A mobile phone company is concerned at the life time of phone batteries supplied by a
new supplier. Based upon historical data this type of battery should last for 900 days with
a standard deviation of 150 days. A recent randomly selected sample of 40 batteries was
selected and the sample battery life was found to be 942 days. Is the sample battery life
significantly different from 900 days (significance level 5%)?
18. A local Indian restaurant advertises home delivery times of 30 minutes. To monitor the
effectiveness of this promise the restaurant manager monitors the time that the order was
received and the time of delivery. Based upon historical data the average time for delivery
is 30 minutes with a standard deviation of 5 minutes. After a series of complaints from
customers regarding this promise the manager decided to analyze the data of the last 50
orders which resulted in an average time of 32 minutes. Conduct an appropriate test at a
significance level of 5%. Should the manager be concerned?
19. A battery manufacturer supplies a range of car batteries to car manufacturers. The 40 Amp-
hour battery is manufactured at two manufacturing plants with a stated mean time
between charges of 8.3 days and a variance of 1.25 days. The company regularly selects an
independent random sample from the two plants with results as shown in Table 6.2.

Plant A Plant B
6.72 10.13 9.31 7.83 9.93 8.10 6.27 8.54
9.83 7.38 9.36 9.23 10.36 7.81 9.69 8.51
7.15 6.93 7.23 8.70 9.06 7.58 8.01 9.54
7.72 9.32 8.32 10.65 8.08 8.35 7.78 9.08
9.20 8.70 9.32 8.09 9.82 6.51 8.33 7.01
11.36 8.50 8.86 10.06 9.56 7.98 8.94 7.06
6.38 7.99 9.34 6.62 7.81 6.62 9.82 9.26
9.57 7.23 8.91 10.74 7.27 8.14 9.45 10.26
Table 6.2

(a) For the given samples conduct an appropriate hypothesis test to test that the sample mean
values are not different at the 5% level of significance.
(b) If the sample means are not significantly different test whether the population mean is 8.3
days (choose sample A to undertake the test).
20. The Indian restaurant manager has employed two new delivery drivers and wishes to
assess their performance. The data in Table 6.3 represent the delivery times for person A
and B undertaken on the same day.

Person
Person A B
32.9 25.6 36.2 34.6 30.3 31.6 25.5 36.5 36.0 36.3
29.4 33.5 32.5 40.7 32.7 25.5 28.1 38.8 32.4 32.8
41.2 35.6 40.8 32.4 35.3 34.2 37.5 33.3 25.9 37.7
40.3 34.6 30.2 37.1 31.0 33.4 32.3 33.2
39.3 36.5 35.0 32.7 35.5 32.6 31.9 36.8
30.3 35.7 40.2 34.2 36.5 34.0 35.9 25.1
37.5 38.0 33.4 33.2 36.1 41.4 29.0 37.6
45.0 30.7 37.8 37.7 28.9 29.8 34.3 34.4
Based upon your analysis of the two samples is there any evidence that the delivery times
are different (test at 5%).
21. A tyre manufacturer conducts quality assurance checks on the tyres that it manufactures. One of
the tests consists of undertaking a test on their medium quality tyres with an independent
random sample of 12 tyres providing a sample mean and standard deviation of 14,500 km and
800 km respectively. Given that the historical average is 15,000 km and that the population is
normally distributed, test whether the sample would raise a cause for concern.
22. A new low-fat fudge bar is advertised as having 120 calories. The manufacturing company
conducts regular checks by selecting independent random samples and testing the sample
average against the advertised average. Historically the population varies as a normal
distribution and the most recent sample consists of the numbers: 99, 132, 125, 92, 108, 127,
105, 112, 102, 112, 129, 112, 111, 102, and 122. Is the population value significantly different
from 120 calories (significance level 5%)?
23. During a national election a national newspaper wanted to assess whether there was a
similar voting pattern for a particular party between two towns in the north-east of
England. The sample results are illustrated in Table 6.4..

Town A Town B
Number interviewed, N 456 345
Intention to vote for party, n 243 212
Table 6.4

Assess whether there is a significant difference in voting intentions between town A

and town B. (test at 5%).
24. A national airline keeps a record of luggage misplaced at two european airports during
one week in the summer of 2006. The sample results are illustrated in Table 6.5.

Airport A Airport B
Total number of items
processed, N 15596 25789
Number of items of
luggage misplaced, n 123 167
Table 6.5
Assess whether there is a significant difference in misplaced luggage between the
two airports (test at 5%).
25. A university finance department would like to compare the travel expenses claimed by staff
attending conferences. After initial data analysis the finance director has identified two
departments who seem to have very different levels of claims. Based upon the data
provided (Table 6.7), undertake a suitable test to assess whether the level of claims from
department A is significantly greater than that from department B. You can assume that the
population expenses data are normally distributed and that the population standard
deviations are approximately equal.

Department A Department B
156.67 146.81 147.28 140.67 108.21 109.10 127.16
169.81 143.69 157.58 154.78 142.68 110.93 101.85
130.74 155.38 179.89 154.86 135.92 132.91 124.94
158.86 170.74
Table 6.7
26. A university finance department would like to compare the travel expenses claimed by staff
attending conferences. After initial data analysis the finance director has identified two
departments who seem to have very different levels of claims. Based upon the data
provided (Table 6.7), undertake a suitable test to assess whether the level of claims from
department A is significantly greater than that from department B. You can assume that the
population expenses data are normally distributed and that the population standard
deviations are approximately equal.

Department A Department B
156.67 146.81 147.28 140.67 108.21 109.10 127.16
169.81 143.69 157.58 154.78 142.68 110.93 101.85
130.74 155.38 179.89 154.86 135.92 132.91 124.94
158.86 170.74
Assume Unequal variances. Are the expenses claimed by department A significantly
different to department B?
27. Choko Ltd provides training to its salespeople to aid the ability of each salesperson to
increase the value of their sales. During the last training session 15 salespeople attended
and their weekly sales before and sales after are provided in Table 6.8.

Person Before After

 1 2911.48 2287.22
2 1465.44 3430.54
3 2315.36 2439.93
4 1343.16 3071.55
5 2144.22 3002.40
6 2499.84 2271.37
7 2125.74 2964.65
8 2843.05 3510.43
9 2049.34 2727.41
10 2451.25 2969.99
11 2213.75 2597.71
12 2295.94 2890.20
13 2594.84 2194.37
14 2642.91 2800.56
15 3153.21 2365.75
Table 6.8

Assuming that the populations are normally distributed, assess whether there is any evidence
that the training improves sales (test at 5% and 1%).
28. Concern has been raised at the standard achieved by students completing final year project
reports within a university department. One of the factors identified as important is the
research methods (RM) module mark achieved, which is studied before the students start their
project. The department has now collected data for 15 students as given in Table 6.9.

Student RM Project
1 38 71
2 50 46
3 51 56
4 75 44
5 58 62
6 42 65
7 54 50
8 39 51
9 48 43
10 14 62
11 38 66
12 47 75
13 58 60
14 53 75
15 66 63
Table 6.9

Assuming that the populations are normally distributed is there any evidence to suggest that the
marks are different (test at 5%).

29. A university finance department would like to compare the travel expenses claimed by staff
attending conferences. After initial data analysis the finance director has identified two
departments who seem to have very different levels of claims. Based upon the data
provided (Table 6.7), undertake a suitable test to assess whether the level of claims from
department A is significantly greater than that from department B. You can assume that the
population expenses data are normally distributed and that the population standard
deviations are approximately equal.

Department A Department B
156.67 146.81 147.28 140.67 108.21 109.10 127.16
169.81 143.69 157.58 154.78 142.68 110.93 101.85
130.74 155.38 179.89 154.86 135.92 132.91 124.94
158.86 170.74
 we assumed that the two population variances are equal. Conduct an appropriate test
to check if the variances are equal (test at 5%)?
30. An estate agent is interested in developing a model to predict the house sales price based
upon two other variables: size of property and age. His initial analysis suggests a
multiple model regression would be appropriate, with the relationship between the
dependent and independent variables being linear. Table 8.21 presents the data set.

Use Excel Data > Data Analysis > Regression to Square

undertake the following tasks: Price, P footage
(£’s) (SF) Age
i. Fit the multiple regression model. 205000 2650 13
ii. Check model reliability. 215000 2664 6
iii. Undertake appropriate inference tests (F 215000 2921 3
and t tests). 199900 2580 4
iv. Check model assumptions. 190000 2580 4
180000 2774 2
156000 1920 1
144900 1710 1
137500 1837 4
127000 1880 8
125000 2150 15
123500 1894 14
117000 1928 18
115500 1767 16
111000 1630 15

31. Fit an appropriate equation to the data set (Table 8.15) to predict the examination mark
given the assignment mark for 14 undergraduate students.

Assignment 69 42 43 40 100 80 100 90 77 47 68 50 45 41

Examination 77 66 65 65 80 71 78 75 70 60 67 61 59 58
Table 8.15

a. Plot a scatter plot and comment on a possible relationship between sales

and advertising.
b. Use Excel regression functions to undertake the following tasks:
i. Fit linear model;
ii. Check model reliability (r and COD);
iii. Undertake appropriate inference tests (t test);
iv. Check model assumptions (residual and normality checks);
32. Table indicates the number of vehicles and number of road deaths in 10 countries.

Countries Vehicles per 100 Road Deaths per

population 100,000 Population
U.K. 31 14
Belgium 32 30
Denmark 30 23
France 46 32
Germany 30 26
Irish Republic 19 20
Italy 35 21
Netherlands 40 23
Canada 46 30
U.S.A. 57 35
Table

a. Construct a scatter plot and comment upon the possible relationship between the two
variables.
b. Calculate the product moment correlation coefficient between vehicle numbers and road
deaths.
 c. Use your answers to (a) and (b) to comment upon your results.

33. Samples of student’s essays were marked by two tutors independently. The resulting ranks
are shown in Table 8.7.

A 5 8 1 6 2 7 3 4
Tutor
B 7 4 3 1 6 8 5 2
a. Calculate the rank correlation coefficient.
b. State any conclusions that you can draw.

34. The mathematics and statistics examination marks for a group of ten students are shown
in Table 8.8.

Mathematics 89 73 57 53 51 49 47 44 42 38
Statistics 51 53 49 50 48 21 46 19 43 43
Table

(a) Find the product moment correlation coefficient for the two sets of marks.
(b) Place the marks in rank order and calculate the rank correlation coefficient.
(c) The following is a quotation from a statistics text ‘Rank correlation can be used to
give a quick approximation to the product moment correlation coefficient.’
Comment on this in the light of your results.
35. A teacher of 40 university students studying the application of Excel within a business
context is concerned that students are not taking a group work assignment seriously. This is
deemed to be important given that the group work element is contributing to the
development of personal development skills. To assess whether or not this is a problem the
module tutor devises a simple experiment which judged the individual level of cooperation
by each individual student within their own group. In the experiment a rating scale is
employed to measure the level of cooperation: 1 = limited cooperation, 5 = moderate
cooperation and 10 = complete cooperation. The form of the testing consists of an initial
observation, a lecture on working in groups, and a final observation. Given the raw data in
Table 7.18 conduct a relevant test to assess whether or not we can observe that cooperation
has changed significantly (assess at 5%).

5, 8 4, 6 3, 3 6, 5 8, 9 10, 9 8, 8 4, 8 5, 5 8, 9
3, 5 5, 4 6, 5 4, 4 7, 8 7, 9 9, 9 8, 7 5, 8 5, 6
8, 7 8, 8 3, 4 5, 6 6, 7 4, 8 7, 8 9, 10 10, 10 8, 9
8, 8 4, 6 4, 5 7, 8 5, 7 7, 9 8, 10 3, 6 5, 6 7,8
36. A company is planning to introduce new packaging for a product that has used the same
packaging for over 20 years. Before it makes a decision on the new packaging it decides to
ask a panel of 20 participants to rate the current and proposed packaging (using a rating
scale of do not change 0 – change 100) (Table 7.20). Is there any evidence that the new
packaging is more favourably received compared with the older packaging (assess at 5%)?

Participant Before After Participant Before After

1 80 89 11 37 40
2 75 82 12 55 68
3 84 96 13 80 88
4 65 68 14 85 95
5 40 45 15 17 21
6 72 79 16 12 18
7 41 30 17 15 21
8 10 22 18 23 25
9 16 12 19 34 45
10 17 24 20 61 80
Table 7.20
37. A local manufacturer is concerned at the number of errors made by machinists in the
production of kites for a multinational retail company. To reduce the number of errors being
made the company decides to retrain all staff in a new set of procedures to minimize the
problem. To assess whether the training worked a random sample of 10 machinists were
selected and the number of errors made before and after the training recorded as shown in
Table7.21.

Machinist
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Before 49 34 30 46 37 28 48 40 42 45
After 22 23 32 24 23 21 24 29 27 27
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Before 29 45 32 44 49 28 44 39 47 41
After 23 29 37 22 33 27 35 32 35 24
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Before 33 38 35 35 47 47 48 35 41 35
After 37 37 24 23 23 37 38 30 29 31
Table 7.21
38.An agriculture officer wants to study the effect of 4 different fertilizers on the specific crop. The
corresponding data are as shown below. Check whether there is significant difference between yields
of different fertilizers used in kruskal wallis test at 0.01 los. Table value is 11.345.

Plot A Rank B Rank C Rank D Rank

1 100 8.5 150 15 120 11 170 16
2 80 5 70 3 110 10 100 8.5
3 68 2 90 7 85 6 78 4
4 125 13 138 14 60 1 124 12

39. Check whether there is any significant difference between three hospitals at 5% level of
significance.
A B C
87 45 66
55 60 50
72 65 55
76 50 88
48 55 72
67 78 65
65 68 84
58 57 77
66 54 48
71 80 56
68 53 54
73 45 72
86 68 60
78 78 56
68 59 53

40. The sale of new homes is tied closely to the level of confidence within the financial markets. A
developer builds new homes in two European countries (A and B) and is concerned that there
is a direct relationship between the country and the interest rates obtainable to build
properties. To provide answers the developer decides to undertake market research to see
what interest rates would be obtainable if he decided to borrow €300,000 over 20 years from 5
financial institutions in country A and 8 financial institutions in country B. Based upon the
data in Table 7.22 do we have any evidence to suggest that the interest rates are significantly
different?
 A: 10.20 10.97 10.63 10.70 10.50 10.30 10.65
10.25 10.75 11.00
B: 10.60 10.80 11.40 10.90 11.10 11.20 10.89
10.78 11.05 11.15 10.85 11.16 11.18
Table 7.22
41. The petrol prices during the summer of 2008 has raised concerns with new car sellers that
potential customers were taking prices into account when choosing a new car. To provide
evidence to test this possibility a group of five local car showrooms agreed to ask fleet
managers and individual customers during August 2008 whether they were or were not
influenced by petrol prices. The results were shown in Table 7.9.

Did petrol prices Fleet customers Individual customers

influence you in
purchasing?
Yes 56 66
No 23 36
At a 5% level of significance is there any evidence for the concerns raised by the car
showroom owners? Answer this question using both the critical test statistic and p-value.

42. A business analyst has been asked to confirm the effectiveness of a marketing campaign on
people’s attitudes to global warming. To confirm that the campaign was effective a group of
500 people were randomly selected from the population and asked the simple question about
whether they agree that national governments should be concerned with an answer of ‘Yes’
or ‘No’. The results are as shown in Table 7.10.

Before campaign After campaign

Yes No
Yes 202 115
No 89 75
At a 5% level of significance is there any evidence that the campaign has increased the
number of people requesting that national governments should be concerned that global
warming is an issue? Answer this question using both the critical test statistic and p-value.