The University of the South Pacific

Serving the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.

SCHOOL OF COMPUTING, INFORMATION &

MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES

ST130: BASIC STATISTICS

FINAL EXAMINATION – SEMESTER 1, 2011

Time Allowed 3 hours plus 10 minutes reading

Total marks: 120

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. There are SIX questions and ALL are compulsory.

2. Write your answers in the answer booklet provided.
3. Start each question on a new page.
4. Show all necessary working. Partial marks will be awarded for partially correct answers.
5. You may use NON PROGRAMABLE calculators.
6. This exam is worth 55% of face-to-face and 60% of DFL students overall mark. The
minimum exam mark is 48/120.
7. Eton Statistical Tables are provided.
 FINAL EXAMINATION SEMESTER 1, 2011

QUESTION 1 Start on new page 10 marks

A. Classify each sample as random, systematic, stratified or cluster.

i. In a large school district, all teachers from two building are interviewed to determine
whether they believe the students have less homework to do now than in previous years.
ii. Every 100th burger manufactured at Mc Donald’s is checked to determine its fat content.
(2 marks)

B. Classify each of the following attributes as either categorical or numerical. For those that are
numerical, determine whether they are ratio or interval and for those that are categorical,
determine whether they are nominal or ordinal.
i. Marital status of patients at a medical clinic.
ii. Thickness of the gelatin coating of a vitamin E capsule.
iii. Temperature inside ten refrigerators at a supermarket.
iv. Ratings of eight local soccer players (poor, fair, good, excellent).

(4 marks)

C. The following data give the amounts spent on video rentals (in dollars) during 2010 by 30
households randomly selected from Suva.

595 24 6 100 100 40 622 405 90 55

155 760 405 90 205 70 180 88 808 100
240 127 83 310 350 160 22 111 70 15

Construct a frequency distribution table using the classes 1-200, 201-400, 401-600, 601-
800, and 801-1000. (4 marks)

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FINAL EXAMINATION SEMESTER 1, 2011

QUESTION 2 Start on new page 20 marks

A. Twenty families in a city were asked how many cars they owned. Their responses are
summarized in the following table:
No. of cars 0 1 2 3 4
No. of families 3 10 4 2 1

i. Calculate the mean, the median and the mode of the number of cars owned per family.
ii. Calculate the standard deviation of the number of cars owned per family.

(5+4=9 marks)

B. The stopping distance on a wet surface was determined for 20 vehicles, each traveling at 60
km/hr. The data (in metres) are shown on the following stem-and leaf display:
3 3 4 7 8
4 0 2 7 7 9
5 1 5 5 6
6 0 0 1 8
7 0 2
8 6

i. Find the outliers (if any). (4 marks)

ii. Construct a box-plot. (3 marks)

C. The gross hourly earnings of a group of workers randomly selected from the payroll list of a
large company in Fiji were organized into the following frequency distribution:

Hourly earnings ($) 8 – 10 10 – 12 12 – 14 14 – 16 16 – 18

Number of workers 11 17 32 27 13

Approximate the standard deviation of hourly earnings for this sample of workers.
(4 marks)

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 FINAL EXAMINATION SEMESTER 1, 2011

QUESTION 3 Start on new page 20 marks

A. A computer supplies store is concerned that it may be over-stocking printers. The store has
tabulated the number of printers sold weekly for each of the past 80 weeks. The results are
summarized in the following table:
No. of printers sold 0 1 2 3 4
Number of weeks 36 28 12 2 2

The store intends to use this data as a basis for forecasting printer sales in any given week.
i. Assign probabilities to each of the individual outcomes.
ii. What approach did you use in determining the probabilities in part (i)?
iii. Find the probability of selling at least 3 printers in any given week.
(2+2+2 =6 marks)

B. Approximately 10% of people are left-handed. If two people are selected at random, what is
the probability that one is right-handed and other is left-handed. (3 marks)

C. Of 20,000 small business surveyed, about 82% said they employed women in some
capacity. Of the business that employed women, 19.5% employed no female supervisor,
50% employed only one female supervisor, and the remainder employed more than one
female supervisor. How many of the business surveyed employed no female supervisors?
(4 marks)

D. Companies whose stocks are listed on the South Pacific Stock Exchange have their
company name represented by 1, 2, or 3 letters in its records (repetition of letters is
allowed). What is the total number of names possible? (3 marks)

E. There are 5 people in a family. What is the probability that at least 2 of them have birthdays
in the same month? (4 marks)

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 FINAL EXAMINATION SEMESTER 1, 2011

QUESTION 4 Start on new page 20 marks

A. It has been reported that 75% of students of USP use e-mail. If a sample of 200 students is selected,
find the mean, variance, and standard deviation of the number of students who use e-mail.

(2 marks)

B. The maintenance department of a city’s electric power company finds that it is cost-efficient
to replace all street-light bulbs at once, rather than to replace the bulbs individually as they
burn out. Assume that the lifetime of a bulb is normally distributed, with a mean of 3000
hours and a standard deviation of 200 hours. If the department wants no more than 1% of
the bulbs to burn out before they are replaced, after how many hours should all of the bulbs
be replaced? (4 marks)

C. Consider the following experiment. A container holds six tokens, each marked with a
different number between and including 1 and 6. The experiment consists of drawing tokens
at random without replacement.

i. List all possible samples of size 2 from this population. (2 marks)

ii. Find the sampling distribution of X . (3 marks)

iii. Find the mean and variance of the sampling distribution of X . Check that

 2  N  n 
 X   and   
2
 . (5 marks)
 N 1 
X
 n

D. Suppose we know that 20 percent of all students who sit for the CPA examination pass it the
first time. You extract a random sample of 500 students who sit for this examination. Find
the probability that less than 17% of the students in the sample will pass it the first time.

(4 marks)

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 FINAL EXAMINATION SEMESTER 1, 2011

QUESTION 5 Start on new page 20 marks

A. The contents of 7 similar containers of sulfuric acid are 9.8, 10.2, 10.4, 9.8, 10.0, 10.2 and
9.6 liters. Find a 95% confidence interval for the mean content of all such containers,
assuming an approximate normal distribution for container contents. (5 marks)

B. A consumer agency wants to estimate, at a 99% confidence level, the proportion of all
households that own at least one pet. What is the most conservative estimate of the sample
size that would limit the maximum error of estimate to within 0.03 of the population
proportion? (3 marks)

C. A manufacturer of batteries claims that his batteries will last, on average, 3 years with a
variance of 1 year. If 5 of these batteries have lifetimes 1.9, 2.4, 3.0, 3.5, 4.2 years,
construct a 95% confidence interval for  2 . (5 marks)

D. The management of Priority Health Club claims that its member loses an average of 10
pounds within the first month after joining the club. A consumer agency that wanted to
check this claim took a random sample of 36 members of this health club and found that
they lose an average 9.2 pounds within the first month of membership with a standard
deviation of 2.4 pounds. Test the management’s claim using P -value at 0.01 level of
significance. (7 marks)

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 FINAL EXAMINATION SEMESTER 1, 2011

QUESTION 6 Start on new page 30 marks

A. Define the terms type I error and type II error. (3 marks)

B. Past experience indicates that the time for high school seniors to complete a certain task is a
normal random variable with a standard deviation of 6 minutes. Test the hypothesis that
  6 against the alternative that   6 , if a random sample of 20 high school seniors has a
standard deviation of 4.51. Use 5% level of significance. (7 marks)

C. A researcher, who is interested in knowing whether the IQ’s of boys less than the IQ’s of
girls, gives an IQ test to a sample of 50 boys and 50 girls. He obtains the following results:

Boys ( X 1 ) Girls ( X 2 )
Mean 81 78
S.D. 9 7

Test the hypothesis that the IQ’s of boys significantly less than the IQ’s of girls. Use 5%
level of significance. (7 marks)

D. The following table gives information on average saturated fat (in grams) consumed per day
and cholesterol level (in milligrams per hundred milliliters) of six men.

Fat consumption 55 68 50 34 43 58
Cholesterol level 180 215 195 165 170 204

i. Find the sample correlation coefficient.

ii. Test at 5% level of significance whether  is different from zero.
iii. Fit a regression line of cholesterol level and predict the cholesterol level of a
man whose fat consumption is 52 grams.
(3+6+4=13 marks)

   The End   

Page 7 of 8
FINAL EXAMINATION SEMESTER 1, 2011

FORMULA SHEET

 fX    fX m  / n
2 2


2 m
1. S .
n 1
X 
2. z  .
/ n
pˆ  p
3. z  .
pq / n
 n  1 S 2
4.  2  .
2

5. z 
X 1  X 2    1   2 
.
 2
 2
1
 2

n1 n2
n   xy     x   y 
6. r  .
 n  x 2    x 2   n  y 2    y 2 
       
n2
7. t  r .
1 r2
8. The regression line y '  a  bx, where

a
  y    x     x   xy  ;
2

b
n   xy     x   y 
.
n  x    x n   x2     x 
2 2 2

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